


Now The Walls Line The Bullet Holes

by HenryMercury



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chicken Soup, Demons, Empath Stiles Stilinski, Home-made Mythology, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post season 3a, Psychic Stiles Stilinski, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-13 01:46:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1208260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/pseuds/HenryMercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek’s looking at him with an uncomfortable sort of reverence—keeping his distance, keeping silent—and that’s the final straw. Stiles has been holding it together pretty well, he thinks, what with Peter’s bite and almost dying and suddenly gaining new psychic powers—but he has <i>no idea</i> how he’s supposed to come to grips with a world in which <i>Derek Hale</i> is afraid of <i>Stiles Stilinski</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Signals

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for suicidal themes.

Less than two weeks have passed since they finished cleaning up the colossal mess left behind by the Darach and the Alpha pack when everything goes to shit again. Stiles should know _so much better_ by now than to be at all surprised.

He should also be anything but shocked to learn that the problem is fucking _Peter_.

_Again._

God, Stiles hates the guy, he hates him so much. Not even all the deft sarcasm in the world could endear Peter to him—and that’s just as well, because Peter has access to industrial quantities of sass. Wit, dry as his bones ought to have been, along with straight-up lies, has constituted his entire person ever since Lydia resurrected him.

It starts with signs of another wolf in the old Hale territory, which is sort of Scott’s territory now that he’s an alpha and Derek and Cora have gone. Scott goes out to investigate, and Stiles stubbornly refuses to let him go alone; he brings a bag of mountain ash, stuffs a second smaller one into his pocket just in case, grabs his trusty baseball bat and the two of them clamber into his jeep.

Walking through the woods is like old times, only not. For one thing, they’re not hoping to find a body this time. For another, Scott’s not wheezing from asthma, he’s sniffing out the trail left by an intruder, because he’s an _alpha werewolf._ And Stiles is equipped with magic dust, and yeah, it’s pretty much the opposite of how it was that first time, though Stiles can’t help but think back and compare, see how far they’ve come.

What _is_ the same is the presence of Peter. He’s in human form tonight, though.

“Scott, Stiles,” he nods at each of them in turn. “What brings you here on this fine evening?”

A strange feeling nips at the back of Stiles neck—like an ordinary sense of foreboding, only more intense, almost a physical weight. He knows instinctively that Peter is its source. He takes a step back.

Scott takes a step forward. “We’re looking for an intruder, probably an omega, somewhere around these parts,” he explains. Scott seems almost relaxed. Can he not feel the really _amazingly bad_ vibes that Peter is giving off right now? If Stiles’ human senses are crying out, Scott would have to be aware.

Only he’s still walking towards Peter, who’s nodding and offering his help with the search.

“Scott, no. Stop.” Stiles blurts out.

Peter’s eyes whip up to meet Stiles’, and he can see nothing friendly in them. There’s a hint of that electric blue flare amongst the usual ice.

“What?” Scott asks, and looks over his shoulder at Stiles, and no, no, _no_ —Stiles can see what’s going to happen before it even begins. Scott’s let his guard just that bit too far down and Peter’s too close and his claws arch in his nail beds and Stiles can just _feel it_ , Peter’s desire for what Scott has, reaching out between them—it’s almost tangible, like ropes wanting to pin Scott down and bathe in his blood.

Peter’s eyes are flashing brightly, now.

Stiles tears open the bag of mountain ash and dives towards Scott, willing the powder to encircle them both as Peter lunges.

 

 

“I still think you should have killed him,” Stiles tells Scott at school the next morning.

“He’s Derek’s uncle,” Scott answers. Stiles gets that, gets that Scott feels bad for Derek after everything, especially since Derek’s not a rival alpha anymore.

But. “He _tried to kill you_ ,” Stiles points out.

“How can you even be sure that’s what he was trying to do?”

It’s a fair question; Peter had backed off just as lightning-fast as he’d pounced, and proceeded to raise an eyebrow at Stiles, who was recovering from his heroic, life-saving leap; mocking him as though he’d overreacted. The bastard. Stiles knows what he felt—he just has no idea how or why he felt it the way he did.

The bell goes for English and they hurry off to class; their new English teacher is much stricter than Ms. Blake, though at least to Stiles’ knowledge he isn’t ritually sacrificing people all over Beacon Hills. Which is really not a thing students should have to comfort themselves with, but such is his life.

 

↔

 

He’s just about finished writing the weird sixth sense thing off as some combination of paranoia and coincidence when it happens again.

This time, Scott is already well and truly in trouble. Stiles feels it like indigestion at first, something unpleasant stirring in his stomach, burning up the back of his throat. He’s sitting in bed, surrounded by piles of chemistry notes, but in an instant his thoughts all snap towards Scott with a burst of panic, like he’s suddenly remembering something really important he forgot to do.

Stiles pulls out his cell and calls, but Scott doesn’t pick up—and then he just _knows_ , knows where his best friend is. He doesn’t bother second-guessing it, just runs down to his car and drives off into the woods.

When he nears the old Hale house, a howl shakes the air. It’s the kind of howl that tells him to stop, almost has him turning around, _almost_ sends him running—but it’s _Scott_ , so almost is as far as any of that gets. Now he knows Scott’s in danger, Stiles realises Peter’s not going to back off this time; he can’t pretend he wasn’t attacking, because Scott’s fully aware of it now. Stiles can only hide them behind a thin line of mountain ash for so long; they’ll be cornered, they’ll get tired, then the wind will come and blow the circle away, or it’ll rain through the holes in the roof, or Stiles will fall asleep or lose hope and his hold on the magic that keeps the ash in place will slip.

He gets his phone out again, fumbles through the contact list until he reaches a name that gives him pause. It’s a contact number he swiped from Scott’s phone in the midst of the action a couple of weeks ago, just in case he ever needed to attempt a bit of threatening or bargaining of his own.

It’s a risk, obviously, but Stiles only knows so many people who not only could but _would_ take on an overtly murderous Peter Hale. Derek is off the table because Stiles is pretty sure being put in this position would be the thing to finally kill him, and Stiles isn’t about to drag him back into all this when he’s only just gotten out and started to move on.

Before he can think better of it, Stiles presses the green button.

“May I ask who’s calling?” an unpleasantly familiar voice answers, British-sounding and edged with threats that Stiles can’t tell if he’s imagining or not.

“This is Stiles,” he explains hurriedly. “I know Scott and Derek ran you out of town, but if you happen still to be nearby, I need you to come to the Hale house as quickly as you can.”

“Stiles,” Deucalion seems to mull the name over for a second. “I see. Now, why should I help you, I wonder?”

Stiles knows there’s nothing he can really offer, and certainly no threats he can personally make. He can only hope that this slightly-reformed Deucalion is capable of still valuing something he can’t own.

He takes a deep breath and lets the words out into the air for the first time, makes them real. “Because Peter Hale is killing Scott.”

Another howl goes up, so loud it shreds things inside his chest, and Stiles is already sprinting through the trees as the line goes dead in his hand.

 

 

It’s actually incredibly lucky that Peter is the kind of asshole who thrives on the indulgent villain speech before making a kill. He has Scott strung up with electrified wires, while he paces and gives a detailed account of how hard it’s been, scheming and biding his time, having to resist the urge to just sink his claws into first his nephew, and then Scott. How bitter he’s been that the little wolf whowouldn’t even be his beta is now an alpha. It’s clear he’s been plotting this for some time.

What Stiles wasn’t expecting was the change in Peter’s eyes.

“Ah, Stilinski,” Peter drawls as he approaches, not bothering to turn around and look.

From where he hangs on the far wall, Scott lets out a whine. “Stiles, run, he’s an—”

Scott is cut off by a surge of electricity that makes him thrash against his chains, but Peter growls and suddenly he’s way, way too close for comfort, right up in Stiles’ personal space.

His eyes are glowing red.

“—an alpha,” Stiles breathes. “How?”

“Well,” Peter says, his breath hot and stale in Stiles’ face, “there are a number of small werewolf packs not all that far from here, if one knows where to look. When I realised what you are, Stiles, I thought it best to try my luck elsewhere. I was able to target a weak link.”

“What do you mean what _I_ am?”

Peter chuckles. “I always did say you would make an excellent wolf, didn’t I?—a great beta, both loyal and cunning. Scott doesn’t even understand how lucky he is to have you.” Peter picks at his claws, affecting boredom. Stiles knows better than to relax for even a second. “He doesn’t deserve you. You could have been mine, and since my alpha powers were... temporarily taken from me, I’ve regretted my decision to let you go.”

Peter’s fangs drop.

“I’d like to remedy that mistake now that they’ve been restored.”

“You mean now that you’ve stolen them from someone else?” Theoretically, Stiles knows that goading someone who’s absolutely got the power to tear him limb from limb isn’t exactly the smartest thing to do—but it’s practically a reflex, especially with Peter. “Scott’s a real alpha. He’s an alpha because he’s _supposed to be_ , because he _earned it._ You’re not even supposed to be alive; you had to steal that as well.”

“I am the alpha. I have always been the alpha, playing you fools like a board of particularly insolent chess pieces. I _did_ earn this.” Peter’s voice sounds tight, like it’s close to slipping down into that deeper, rougher wolf octave. “And this time, you _will_ join with me.”

Stiles scoffs. “Hate to disappoint, but the answer’s still no, dude. Being human is still kind of my thing.”

“Did I ask you?” Peter takes another step towards Stiles, holding him tightly in place by his forearms. He ducks, sniffs as Stiles’ chest, over his ribs, and before Stiles can even make a comment about all the bad touching that’s currently going on all the air is being punched out of him as blinding pain slices into his side. He doesn’t quite manage to bite back the cry of shock and hurt, doesn’t quite manage to keep his feet under him as Peter retracts his teeth and steps away looking as pleased with himself as Stiles has ever seen him.

If there had ever been any doubt, it’s abundantly clear to Stiles now, as the bite— _the_ bite—leaks a growing patch of blood into the fabric of his t-shirt, that this is not what he wants. He doesn’t want to be a werewolf. He especially doesn’t want to be Peter’s beta. He’ll have to do everything he can to break that connection. Scott will have to help him. It’ll be like old times, only this time Stiles will be the one who’s fighting for control and—oh god, what if he attacks his Dad? What if Peter makes him _kill his Dad?_ He can’t _breathe_ —

“I’m not too late, am I?” that familiar dry, British voice interrupts from somewhere behind him.

Twin snarls echo around the room, one Peter’s and one Scott’s.

“Scott,” he pants, “it’s okay. I called him.” All Stiles can do now is hope that Deucalion recognises that it’s in his interests to help Scott, not to kill him.

“I see you’re causing trouble as usual,” Deucalion remarks, moving around Stiles until he’s only a few feet short of Peter. “And as an alpha, too. How interesting.”

Stiles doesn’t even see Peter’s hand dart out before it’s being caught by a stronger one. Deucalion’s skin is dark, almost bluish, his fingers gnarled and ending in long black claws.

When he speaks again, his voice is low like thunder, too heavy to be natural for either human or werewolf. “You were always opportunistic, I’ll give you that—but it isn’t enough.”

“I—” Peter starts, but Deucalion drives an unearthly grey hand right through his neck.

Stiles crawls across the floorboards towards Scott, turning the dials to shut the electricity down, so he can heal and break his bonds.

When he turns back to look at Deucalion, he looks like an ordinary man again.

“Thanks,” Stiles offers.

Deucalion simply nods. “He irritated everybody.”

 

↔

 

Stiles sticks a bandage over the bite, surreptitiously buries his ruined shirt in the trash and is in bed by the time his Dad gets home and checks on him. He knows the bite either kills or turns, and he doesn’t _feel_ like he’s dying, just sore where the skin is torn up. The rhythm of the throbbing heat in his side becomes almost like white noise, sending him to sleep.

He wakes up in the morning. He takes that as a good sign that he’s probably not going to die from this. So. He must be a wolf now. He peels up the edge of the bandage to get a glimpse of his new super-healing. The bandage is heavy with dried blood, and—

—and the raw indents left by Peter’s teeth are still all there, scabbed over but pretty much exactly as tender as they had been the previous night.

_Bro_ , he texts Scott, _it’s not healing._

 

 

He begs a sick day from his Dad, and is about fifty (increasingly far-fetched, but hey, werewolves have kind of redefined far-fetched for him) theories in to his list of what could possibly be going on with him when there’s a knock on his door. His Dad shouldn’t be back for hours yet, and he knows Melissa made Scott go to school because he has a Spanish quiz and, despite his new committed-student routine, he needs all the marks he can get after all the study he’s missed thanks to the latest surge of supernatural crap that they’ve had to deal with. It’s possible his Dad sent somebody to check on him, so he makes sure the bandage is holding and hidden beneath his shirt and makes his way down to the front door, snuffling a little for good measure.

The last person he expects to see when he peers through the peephole is Derek Hale.

But because his life is what it is, that’s exactly who’s standing there.

He opens the door and Derek barges right on in.

_Dammit Scott_ , Stiles texts, _why would you call Derek?!_

Stiles follows Derek through to the kitchen, watching him from behind because hey, it’s always a fine view.

_He’d have killed me if you’d... y’know, and I hadn’t told him,_ Scott replies.

If he’d died, Stiles translates. Awesome, everybody’s planning for his death—a death which may still be imminent, even though he feels pretty normal.

Derek still hasn’t said a word, but when he reaches the kitchen he turns to Stiles, steps close and inhales.

It’s kind of weird, so Stiles does what he always does, and tries to offset the awkwardness with speech.

“What’s the verdict, huh?” he asks, as Derek pulls up his shirt and sniffs at the bandage. “Am I going to live? Am I a really slow-healing werewolf—or am I immune because I’m secretly some other type of supernatural creature, like Lydia? I could probably scream pretty loudly if I tried—”

“Human,” Derek grunts, cutting him off.

“I’m still human? That’s awesome. I mean, not that there’s anything _wrong_ with being a werewolf, I’m just not sure it’s for me, y’know...” Stiles trails off because Derek’s just looking at him with one of his usual bland expressions, but he’s radiating worry.

Stiles has the sudden urge to comfort him. “Hey,” he says, and reaches out to put a hand on Derek’s shoulder. “Calm down, okay? I feel fine, I feel really normal, actually; nothing hurts any more than you’d expect from some toothy lacerations. Save the worry for later, if I start shifting into a kanima or something, alright?”

Derek just raises an eyebrow, as if to say _What are you on about, I’m not worried_ , but he’s gratified that the flood of concerned vibes he was getting from him lessens just slightly. Derek then steps into the kitchen and starts rifling through the pantry.

Stiles figures he could ask what on earth he’s doing, but it wouldn’t do much good because Derek looks like he’s on a mission—a silent, no-talking-until-I’ve-done-what-I-came-here-to-do type of mission.

There’s a clanging sound when a saucepan hits the stove top, then a metallic whine which must be Derek clawing open a can, judging by the tinned soup he’s now pouring into the pan. When he sets the empty tin on the counter Stiles sees it’s chicken and corn.

“Holy shit, dude, are you seriously making me chicken soup right now?” he blurts out.

Derek just grumbles, but he digs a wooden spoon out of one of the drawers to stir and doesn’t deny it.

“Peter said I _was_ something, before he bit me,” Stiles says. It’s sort of out of nowhere, because it’s been eating at him and he might as well see whether Derek has any ideas, while he’s here. Derek stiffens where he stands at the stove. “I have no idea what he meant,” Stiles continues, “he just said it like he thought I was some sort of creature, something with some kind of power—which obviously makes no sense, but still.”

“What did Deaton have to say?” Derek asks finally.

Stiles shrugs, even though Derek’s not looking. “Haven’t been to see him yet.”

“Then we’ll go right after you eat your soup,” Derek informs him as he tips the soup out of the saucepan and into a bowl, thrusting it in Stiles’ direction.

“Uh, thanks,” Stiles says awkwardly as he takes it, because _Derek made him soup, what the hell_. He feels an odd swell of affection, and it takes him a minute to realise that it’s not entirely his. Derek’s face still looks more or less blank, but on some subconscious level Stiles recognises something there that makes him think Derek’s fighting the urge to wrap Stiles up and try to shield him from things even though he knows he can’t.

Stiles has no idea how he knows this, and sure, it’s possible he’s projecting, but he’d sensed Peter’s evil intentions and Scott’s fear before this.

Besides, Derekmade him soup. Crazy things are clearly afoot.

“We are not speaking of this again, by the way,” Derek informs him, all the while clattering around in the cutlery drawer in search of a spoon for Stiles to eat with.

 

↔

 

By the time they get to the clinic, school is finished and Scott’s already there to meet them. Cora’s there too, sitting in a corner and looking thoroughly bored. He gives her an awkward half-wave.

“Stiles,” Deaton greets him with his usual mysteriously neutral expression—which, right now, could mean anything from _everybody’s just overreacting_ to _you’re about to die a horrible death_ or even _yer a wizard, Stiles._ “Scott filled me in on your situation.”

“And?”

“I have my suspicions,” Deaton answers, which doesn’t help at all, damn it. “First, I need to know whether you have been experiencing anything unusual recently. Anything at all.”

Stiles almost blurts out something about the soup, but he stops himself just in time.

“I guess, yeah, I have. It’s kind of... hard to explain, but I keep _feeling_ things. Like anger, or fear, or affection—”

Derek and Cora both snort at that. Screw them.

“—only they’re other people’s feelings, not mine. I felt Peter’s bloodlust, just before he tried to kill Scott. Both times. And the second time I was just sitting in my room and suddenly I felt Scott’s fear, and I knew he was in trouble. I don’t know how, but I did.”

Deaton nods sagely. “And has the bite healed at all?”

“It’s definitely still there, but I guess it’s healing at a normal pace? It’s started scabbing over a bit, you know, like a wound usually would. It’ll bleed if it gets knocked and reopened, but it’s not _still bleeding_.”

Deaton hums. He looks over Stiles thoughtfully, and suddenly Stiles feels curiosity wash over him—curiosity that doesn’t belong to him. It’s the sort of feeling a scientist might have when close to a breakthrough.

“I can feel that,” he meets Deaton’s gaze. “You think this is really interesting.” He feels inordinately excited about being able to read Deaton, even to a very limited extent.

The vet smiles, and between the expression and the weird feelings-radiation Stiles is picking up, he gathers that he’s almost proud.

“You know what I am. Tell me.”

“Why don’t we all sit down,” Deaton suggests.

 

 

“Accompanying the legend of the true alpha, there is a second, lesser-known legend,” Deaton tells the small party gathered in the clinic. “Just as all wolves are stronger in packs, for a true alpha to realise their potential they require support—indeed, they would not be true alphas if they could not inspire loyalty in a pack. Often the alpha’s second-in-command is another wolf—but legend speaks of a human who may rise alongside the true alpha and, through the strength of his or her loyalty to the pack, gain the powers of a wolf without ever receiving the bite. A true beta.”

Stiles is still busy trying to wrap his head around _the_ most confusing story time he’s ever sat through when Scott interrupts.

“But Stiles _was_ bitten. I saw it happen. And he doesn’t seem to be turning into a werewolf.”

The edge of Deaton’s mouth quirks just very slightly. “Yes,” he agrees. “But there are stories, older and rarer still, which suggest that the wolf is not the only form a true beta may take. The lore surrounding true alphas is scarce enough, and many of those who would be true betas are already wolves and never notice a change. Most of the remaining handful whose stories are told were humans who become wolves. There is one other case, however, passed down over many tongues since the middle ages—of a woman who was a kanima, controlled by a cruel husband. She befriended a werewolf pack, her husband was killed and one of the betas became the kanima’s master instead. This beta never instructed or allowed her to kill anyone but murderers; it is perhaps the only instance recorded of a kanima’s master actually remaining within those boundaries. This beta became a true alpha, and the kanima woman became his first beta. She never turned into a kanima again.”

“So her true beta form was human?” Cora asks, sounding like she can’t quite believe why anyone would choose human fragility over being a werewolf. Stiles supposes he can’t entirely blame her, since she’s never been just-human.

“That is what the legends say,” confirms Deaton.

“And you think that’s what’s happening to me? I’m some sort of... _true beta_ , and it reversed the bite to keep me human?”

“Mostly, yes. But you have also been acquiring other gifts, Stiles; ones which must in some way reflect your role within the pack and your desired abilities.”

Stiles wishes for the billionth time Deaton would be just a little bit less cryptic. He mentally feels around in the air, trying to pick up an emotional signal or any other kind of clue from the vet’s direction. It’s kind of like he’s waving his phone around in search of wifi, and he abruptly feels stupid and stops.

_...always wanting to know everything, oh no, what if he knows that—_

It’s Derek’s voice, coming from so close behind him that it sounds almost as though it’s actually in his head, like music does when he’s wearing headphones.

“What?” Stiles presses. “Finish your sentences, man.”

Everybody stares at him.

 “You weren’t talking to me just then, were you Stiles?” asks Deaton.

“No, of course not, Derek said something...” Stiles looks over at Derek, who’s really more beside than behind him, and looks distinctly wide-eyed.

Scott shakes his head. “Derek didn’t say anything.”

“But I just heard him—”

Deaton is projecting that scientific fascination again, and it clicks in Stiles’ brain that this must be part of the weird sixth-sense thing.

“Am I becoming a mind-reader?” he asks.

“It’s possible. Most telepaths are only able to sense strong spikes in the emotions of those around them, but verbal mind-reading is possible in certain circumstances, amongst the most powerful telepaths and those they share close links with.”

Suddenly Stiles is coughing, because the room seems as though it’s filled with something like smoke, clouding thickly in his throat. His spine feels molten and freezing at the same time and his hands are sweating coldly.

At the edge of the room, Derek appears to be wishing he could blend in to the wall. He’s looking at him with an uncomfortable sort of reverence, keeping his distance, keeping silent, like he wants to be far, far away where his mind can’t be broken into. His fear is wrapping itself around Stiles, leaving him no space to breathe, and that’s the final straw; Stiles has been holding it together pretty well, he thinks, what with Peter’s bite and almost dying and suddenly gaining new psychic powers—but he has _no idea_ how he’s supposed to deal with a world in which _Derek Hale_ is _afraid_ ofhim. It’s not like he’d try to hurt anybody. It’s not like he asked for these powers. Over the years, he’s definitely thought about how it would be awesome to intimidate Derek right back—but hacking into his psyche is never how he’d imagined doing it, and it doesn’t feel nearly as satisfying as he’d imagined.

He shoots Derek a scowl and walks out of the examination room, through the mountain ash gate to the waiting room and out into the car park. 


	2. Chills

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this got somewhat darker than I'd expected. TW for suicide attempt.

Lydia is the actual best. She’s the most sympathetic about the whole psychic thing, probably because she’s also grappling with her own newfound psychicness. She invites him over to study or research with her, and is just generally the exact _opposite_ of Derek, who’s been hiding from Stiles ever since they all met at Deaton’s two weeks ago.

Stiles hadn’t realised how much he’d actually notice Derek ignoring him until it started happening. It also doesn’t help that he keeps coming back to Derek barging into his house all concerned for his welfare, making him chicken soup and projecting some sort of affection towards him. It would be easier to get over the fact that Derek apparently hates him now if he’d never been led to believe he might like him, even just a little bit.

“You’re moping again,” Lydia says, shoving a dusty book under Stiles’ nose.

“Hey,” Stiles protests, “I’m supposed to be the one with the magical emotion-sensing powers.”

Lydia huffs. “I don’t _need_ magical powers to sense that you are moping, Stiles,” she says. And yeah, Lydia really doesn’t need the assistance of superpowers in order to know everything.

Stiles flips open the book and gets back to reading up on druidic rituals. The handwritten text is tiny and faded, and the language is smattered with Old English, but Lydia’s working through a pile of tomes written in Ancient Greek, Latin and Archaic Latin, so Stiles can’t really complain. He’s trying to get some sense of what might happen now that the Nemeton’s power has been reactivated, but he’s not getting very far—just like he hadn’t gotten very far with his research into telepathy. Nothing in the books seems to match what he has; like Deaton had said, telepaths who sense emotion usually only pick up particularly strong waves of it. Sirens have the power to pull images from a person’s mind as well as feelings, but Stiles is really very sure that he’s not a siren. There are a notable telepaths in history who could, with great concentration, pluck words and phrases from people’s minds, but virtually nothing is written about picking up emotions _and_ words simultaneously. He’d believe that it couldn’t be done, if he couldn’t do it himself.

“Still moping,” Lydia jabs him in the ribs with her elbow.

 

↔

 

The major flaw in Derek’s plan of avoidance is that Stiles doesn’t actually have to be in the same room with someone in order to sense their feelings. He had known Scott was in danger from halfway across Beacon Hills, for goodness’ sake. It’s harder to get a read on someone when they’re further away, sure, but intense fluctuations in emotion show up on his radar regardless of proximity.

Derek, unsurprisingly, is prone to pretty serious emotional spikes.

The worst part is the nightmares. The first time it happened Stiles had woken abruptly, sweating coldly in abject terror, with no idea what he was so afraid of. No memory of a horrible nightmare, nothing specific that would be likely to cause a panic attack, and yet there he had been, hauling in the breaths like he’d just run a marathon chased by hordes of evil alpha werewolves.

He’d doubted the convenience of his powers when Derek (and Isaac and Allison, to a lesser extent) had started steering clear of him, apparently afraid that he would catch a whiff of some feeling they didn’t want eavesdropped upon. The nightmares, though—those had made him _seriously_ doubt his powers. What good was an ability that just caused him pain? Why, if this was some reflection of what power his subconscious desired, did his subconscious insist on being such a masochistic jerk?

After the third big night terror, the worst one so far, Stiles texts Derek.

_My powers suck_ , he says. Because right now, they definitely do. He’s got school in the morning, the promise of an economics quiz _and_ an important chemistry prac, both of which he’s probably going to fail due to falling asleep on his desk. Or, in the case of chem, in a puddle of some toxic substance. Maybe even on top of a lit Bunsen burner. Catastrophe is practically inevitable; he hasn’t slept in three days, and he’s been jittery and paranoid to boot.

_Why,_ Derek replies. His lack of punctuation paints a pretty accurate picture of his tone, Stiles thinks. Notably, the anxiety racking Stiles has lessened in the past minute. Maybe having somebody to talk to helps Derek calm down?

_Because I can feel when everyone’s afraid_. Stiles types out. _I don’t need any more fear in my life. There is already a surplus of fear._

Derek doesn’t reply, but there’s a sudden twinge of guilt in Stiles’ gut. He supposes he can see how that last text may have been counterproductive.

 

↔

 

“You have to teach me how to block it out,” Stiles begs Deaton. “I can’t take feeling like Derek twenty-four seven. It’s ruining my life.” And by the sound of his own words, it’s converting Stiles to Derek’s particular brand of emo, too.

“I haven’t slept more than three hours a night _all week_ ,” he moans. “I’m only human. I literally cannot live like this.”

“You’re right about that,” Deaton says, and Stiles senses worry. It’s much fainter than Derek’s fear, but then most things are. Doesn’t mean it’s not a bad sign. “You are only human. The physical impacts of Derek’s psychological trauma have not damaged his body irreparably because of his werewolf healing. To you, however, they may do some serious damage.”

“So what do I do?”

“You could consider treatment?” Deaton suggests.

“So, what, I’m supposed to get sleeping pills and therapy to deal with PTSD that isn’t even mine?” Stiles asks incredulously. One might even say he shouted. “You seriously don’t have anything better to suggest? Because that’s really not fair at all.”

Deaton looks on, serene as ever in the face, but Stiles feels the stab of irritation underneath it. It’s kind of satisfying, knowing that he’s gotten to him.

“Stiles,” he says levelly, “as I explained to you before, this power must be a manifestation of some part of yourself. Can you think of a reason why you may have subconsciously selected telepathy?”

“Because I secretly have a deathwish?” Stiles bites sarcastically. “I don’t know, okay? None of this makes any sense to me.”

“Think. Is it possible that you have wished you could sense things the way werewolves can—lying, or fear, or lust, for instance?”

Stiles slows himself down to think about that one. “Sure,” he says. It does suck to be one of the only people in his circle of friends without a built-in lie detector. “I guess.”

“And perhaps you felt that you would be better able to help your friends if you were able to tell how they felt, see through any lies about their welfare?”

“I... hadn’t thought about it that way,” Stiles realises. “Yeah, you could say both those things are true. But if these powers were supposed to benefit me, why are they driving me insane instead?”

“All powers come with their own complications,” says Deaton. “As a werewolf must learn to control his or her powers, so must you.”

“Which is why I came to you in the first place! How do I block it out?”

Deaton sighs, and Stiles knows he has no answer for him before he opens his mouth to say so.

“I think it is likely that willpower and practice are your only options if you wish to put up a wall between yourself and the emotions of others. I will suggest, however, that you continue to experiment with your powers, get a sense of what they can do. I think it is likely that you are capable of things neither of us have imagined.”

“Okay, thanks Yoda,” Stiles tells Deaton, and heads off home before the vet starts actually giving his cryptic advice by way of inverted sentences.

 

 

Stiles is cool with the idea of experimenting with his powers,  but right now he’s way too fucking tired to have a hope of manipulating them. He can’t even hold his eyes open long enough to read the quiz paper in front of him; his focus is blurring, the rows of multiple choice dots multiplying and swimming around before his eyes.

“Are you okay, Stiles?” Scott whispers from the next desk across.

No, he’s not okay. Stiles’ whole body is screaming that he shouldn’t be here, that he should be at home in his bed, or at the very least lying on the nearest horizontal surface.

“Just really tired,” he explains, which is the truth for the purposes of convincing a werewolf, but a lie by omission in that he’s not really _just_ tired, he’s so sleep-deprived he may actually be dying of it, he’s terrified all the time and he can’t make it stop, which only terrifies him even more.

“You’re really stressed as well,” Scott comments. “Actually it’s kind of confusing, all the stress that’s coming off you. It’s way more than normal. What’s going on, Stiles?”

Stiles opens his mouth to tell Scott he’ll explain it all later, when Coach yells, “Stilinski! Quit yammering and finish your test!”

Coach looks shocked when Stiles doesn’t talk back, just hunches over and does as he’s told. He’s way too tired to argue.

 

 

“Holy crap, Stiles, why didn’t you _tell me about this_?” Scott demands, once Stiles has finished filling him in on the whole nightmare situation.

“I didn’t see the point. There’s nothing you can do about it, right? It’s not like you can drain psychological pain with your wolfy powers, and it’s not like you’re any more familiar with telepathy than Deaton or any of the hundred books I’ve scoured, so I figured I wouldn’t bother you with problems you can’t fix.”

Scott frowns at him, radiates disappointment and frustration, edged by shame and regret. Stiles thinks those emotions are directed mostly at Scott’s own self. There’s also a little winding thread of affection there for Stiles, kind of like the huggy feeling he’d sensed from Derek. It’s not weird or unexpected that Scott would want to hug Stiles, though.

“Doesn’t mean I won’t help you find a way,” Scott insists. “Deaton said this whole thing was linked with the true alpha legend, that each of us are what we are because we have each other—so work with me, man. Working together is obviously what makes us strong.”

Stiles takes his best friend up on that hug he’d been subconsciously offering, wraps himself around Scott and just hangs on, too exhausted to think about anything else, not even his legs holding his body off the ground. Scott all but carries him out to his car, takes his keys and drives them both back to The McCalls’ place. Stiles is carried right up the stairs, which would probably be embarrassing if it weren’t _so_ good not to have to walk right now, and set down on Scott’s soft mattress. Scott lies down beside him, curls in around him. Stiles hangs on to him like he’s a life preserver. It’s easy to do this with Scott; nothing is really embarrassing when you’ve been through absolutely everything with somebody.

Scott feels like he’s concerned, but Stiles thinks he might be holding the feeling back as best he can because he knows Stiles will suffer under it if he allows himself to worry. Instead, warm tendrils of contentment and reassurance wrap around him. Stiles feels happy and calm with his best friend here with him, knowing everything he’s struggling with and helping him through it—and he feels it all double-strength because that’s exactly how Scott’s feeling too.

 

 

When Stiles wakes up, it’s mid-morning of the following day. He feels groggy, the after-effects of both under and over-sleeping at once, but it’s still better than the ragged alertness he’s been enjoying for the past week.

“How are you feeling?” Melissa appears in the doorway, dressed in her hospital scrubs, bag slung over her shoulder. She’s smiling at him, but she’s also concerned.

“Better than I was yesterday,” Stiles replies, offering a smile of his own. “Lots better.”

“That’s good. Scott went to school but I called your Dad last night and he said just to let you sleep as much as possible. You can go in for your last few classes if you’d like, or you can go home, or you can stay here; you know you’re always welcome.”

“Thanks,” says Stiles. “I might head home to get a few things, but if it’s okay I think I’ll sleep here again tonight. Seems to work for me.”

“Okay. I was just on my way out, so you just help yourself to some breakfast. Or lunch, whatever you want to call it.”

It says something that Melissa’s giving Stiles free reign over her kitchen; really, truly disastrous things can and have happened when he’s given that sort of power.

“Don’t worry about me,” he says, even though he knows she will anyway, because she always does.

Melissa nods, though Stiles knows it’s not in acquiescence. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Stiles,” she says, and then ducks away, leaving him sprawled out across Scott’s bed, immersed in the smell of Scott on the blankets, soaking up the familiar atmosphere of his best friend’s room, as much a home to him as his own. He feels calm, like it anchors him in place, shuts out the storm—

Wait. Anchors. _Anchors_.

He whips out his phone. _Scott, buddy, I think you might be my anchor._

 

 

“Like, an _anchor_ anchor?” Scott asks, eyes a little wide with surprise. “Werewolf-style?”

“Far as I can tell,” Stiles shrugs. “All I know is I was pretty in control of it last night, when you were there with me, in a way I was absolutely _not_ when I was at home by myself.”

“Could it be an alpha/beta thing? What with us being linked and everything?” Scott asks, and it’s actually a pretty insightful question.

It’s probably not the answer, though, because, not that he’s jealous or anything, but Stiles isn’t and has never been Scott’s anchor. He tells him as much.

Scott frowns. “Dude, you may not have been my specific _anchor_ , but I would still have been completely out of control without you. You were just... _there_ , solid, even when it sucked—”

“—which it often did,” Stiles interjects.

Scott doesn’t argue with that. “What I needed was a strong emotion, something a little bit wild to beat the wolf into submission. Allison was passion, romantic love, whereas you were familiarity and stability—”

“Relative stability,” Stiles can’t help himself.

“—all I’m saying is, maybe we both need anchors, but the _types_ of anchors we need are different?”

“Huh.”

Scott’s making a really, surprisingly good point here. Stiles supposes that being a true alpha and all, he has learned a thing of two about How To Successfully Be A Supernatural Creature. He’s going to tear up just thinking about how far little Scotty has come since the good ole days when he was first bitten and they were both freaking out, if he doesn’t stop thinking about it right now.

“Maybe since you’re feeling all these crazy emotions from everybody around you, what you need is an anchor that’s calm and familiar and simple. Like an old friend.”

Stiles hugs him. Sometimes he just can’t help it; Scott is so very huggable.

 

↔

 

Stiles keeps staying over at Scott’s, which means that Isaac’s avoidance is that much more pointed, what with him living at the McCalls’ now. Stiles doesn’t really pick up much from him anyway; a lingering hint of anxiety, sure, but it’s nothing compared to what he gets from Derek, or from himself for that matter. Maybe Stiles and Isaac just don’t have a super strong ‘connection’? ...Which would make more sense if Stiles and _Derek_ did. Chicken soup notwithstanding, Stiles and Derek’s relationship has always been pretty one-sided: Stiles lusts after the older, troubled, bad-boy werewolf, and the older, troubled, bad-boy werewolf grumbles and deigns to tolerate him when he wants help.

After a week of peaceful sleep camped out in Scott’s bedroom, Stiles is unpleasantly interrupted once again.

He jerks bolt upright in the dark, shaking with a feeling that drowns him for reasons unbeknownst to him. With this feeling racing through him, reasons don’t seem to matter all that much anyway. Stiles has been in near-death situations before, and he recognises the adrenaline, so heady everything’s surreal—but the rest of the sensation isn’t like escaping near death. It’s weighty and oozing and poisonous, the kind of depression that sets in after watching someone _else_ die. The feeling of wishing you’d been in their place, wishing the world would crumble apart instead of going on as usual, because it’s too hard to make sense of ordinary things when your personal raincloud is this heavy.

He feels sick. Notices there are tears on his face.

“Scott,” he chokes out softly. “Scott, something bad’s happening.”

It’s then that his phone rings, a raucous electronic buzz and flashing light in the previously still darkness. Scott stirs next to him, clearly doing his best to rouse himself as quickly as possible. Stiles grabs his cell and answers.

“Stiles,” Lydia’s voice sounds panicked, almost as unsteady as Stiles’ own.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I don’t know, not exactly,” Lydia says. “But I had this dream—it was weird, all I was doing was running a bath, but the noise of the water was really, _really_ loud. And then I woke up, but the noise didn’t stop. I can barely even tune it out to speak to you right now.”

“Okay, you’re right, that’s strange,” he says. “Do you sense anything else? Any inkling of anything at all?”

“Yes, actually,” Lydia goes on. “In the dream, I was tossing something into the bathwater. At first I thought it was some sort of scented bath crystals or something. It was kind of like potpourri—but thinking back it looked more like—”

“Wolfsbane?” Stiles hazards a guess.

“Yes,” Lydia agrees.

“Alright,” Stiles tries to keep his breathing even. “Just before you called me, I woke up with a bad feeling. Like really, disastrously bad. I’m pretty confident that my bad feeling is linked to yours.”

“You can pinpoint where it’s coming from, right? That’s a part of what your powers do?”

“Usually, yeah, but right now it feels too big, like it’s coming from everywhere. It’s too much, and I can’t try to hone it any further when I’m trying to block it out.”

“Then don’t block it out?”

Stiles shudders at the very thought. “I can’t,” he says.

“Why not?” Lydia wants to know.

Stiles would like a reasonable explanation for why not too, honestly. All he knows is that, if he’s drowning right now, letting any more of this feeling in is akin to swimming away from the lifeboat and out into the heaving, frothy swell.

“It’s bad, okay,” he sighs.

Lydia is silent for a second. When she speaks she does so with notes of sympathy.

“I know it is, Stiles. This psychic stuff is driving me insane tonight too, which means bad news for whoever’s in trouble. But that’s just it: someone’s in trouble. If it’s this bad for you, think of how bad it must be for them.”

She has a point. Stiles resents this fact, because fear and reason tend to come into conflict purely by the nature of each, and Stiles is very fearful right now.

“You can do it, Stiles, I know you can,” says Scott, who seems to have woken the rest of the way up and tuned in to the conversation. “I’ll be right here the whole time, okay?”

It’s not okay, it’s not okay at _all_ —but even if they’re both wrong and Stiles really genuinely cannot cope with this, he knows he still has to try. The reason he has these psychic abilities to begin with is to do things like this, to help people who are in trouble.

He has a sneaking suspicion as to who it is that’s in trouble, but time is of the essence and running over to the Derek’s with all guns blazing will cost someone dearly if it this distress turns out not to be his.

“I’ll try,” Stiles says.

Scott pats him on the shoulder, some combination of _I’m proud of you_ and _I’m here to be your anchor, remember._

Tentatively, Stiles shrugs off the blanket of security that’s kept him sane here in the McCall household. It feels like he’s shedding all his clothes in the arctic, bitter wind whipping and biting at his bare skin. Numbness, but the painful kind. He’s vaguely aware that he’s shivering, but his body feels far-off. All that’s real is the seemingly brilliant idea that he could dig a hole and bury himself in it, that he could never hear from himself again.

There’s one more horrible wave of it, like icy water all around him, ice sheets on every side and no idea which way is up, no choice but to let it lay siege to his lungs, and then finally he finds the thread that leads him to the source.

It’s not exactly a surprise. It _is_ unexpected, however, that rather than coming from Derek’s loft, Stiles traces his anguish to the Hale house.

 

 

Scott and Stiles pull up outside the Hale house just moments before Lydia arrives. She races inside, and Stiles hobbles along as quickly as he can with Scott supporting him. He’s anchored again, but he still feels like his insides have been scraped out with something rusty. It’s like a telepathy-hangover, only the actual telepathy was nowhere near as fun as a night of drunken shenanigans would have been. Telepathy sucks.

The moment they get inside the house, Scott starts coughing. “Definitely wolfsbane,” he grits out.

“Where’s the bathroom in this place?” Stiles asks.

Scott sniff the air, nose wrinkling with distaste. “Second storey,” he says, so they set about clambering up the rickety staircase.

The bathroom is large, white tiles marred by the licking of past flames and the subsequent accumulation of nasty black mould. The air is heavy with fragrant steam, the kind that has Scott doubling over. Stiles’ knees crack against the floor, but the impact is nothing next to the crushing weight of Derek’s grief as it settles on him, bigger and colder than ever.

Derek is in the tub, still-warm water poisoned with the petals of crushed purple flowers and swirling blood, still leaking from long claw slashes to each of his wrists. There’s so, _so_ much blood in the water, it looks milky and smells metallic and wrong, even to Stiles, even underneath the scent of the wolfsbane.

For one horrible moment, Stiles wonders whether Derek did this to get away from him—but that’s ridiculous. He assures himself of it. It would be a totally disproportionate response to a bit of eavesdropping. Not even Derek is _that_ melodramatic.

Stiles grits his teeth.

_—shouldn’t be alive,_ Derek’s voice groans weakly in Stiles head. _Should be dead by now. Why isn’t it working—_

It’s a tough exercise with Stiles and Scott both in less than optimal condition, but together they haul limp Derek out of the bath and out of the room into the corridor, where the air is at least slightly clearer.

_Needed the pain to be over_ , runs through Derek’s thoughts more than once. Stiles may not like it (at _all_ ) but he can’t deny that he sort of understands where Derek’s coming from. He’d felt a sample of the guy’s pain wash right through him, and oblivion had seemed pretty fucking appetising.

Once he’s out of the wolfsbane solution, Derek’s body starts to heal, slashed wrists closing up much to Stiles’ relief. His face is pallid, ghostly bone-white against his dark hair and stubble. There’s still so much hurt and confusion hanging over him that Stiles is leaning in for a hug before he even knows it.

They take Derek to Deaton’s, firstly to make sure he’s actually going to make it, and secondly because Deaton might have something to say with regard to whatever the hell is going on with him. Derek’s been miserable for years, Stiles is well aware of that—but why choose _now_ , when he’s got a pack around him that’s actually almost stable, people who need and want him around, to try and end it all? Stiles is inclined to think that something else going on here, something seriously fishy.

The alternative certainly won’t do.

 

↔

 

“He’s very cold,” Deaton murmurs, setting the thermometer down on the counter of his examination room. Derek lies flat an still on the examination table, his shorts soaked through and the rest of him still damp. It might be quite a sight to behold, but even Stiles recognises that this is not the time to be checking out Derek’s physique. Just no.

Stiles picks up the thermometer to see just how freezing Derek is.

“Hey,” he says, “this says ninety-nine degrees. That’s normal—warm, even.”

“Not for a werewolf,” answers Deaton.  

Stiles is temporarily ashamed at not knowing this, what with being a werewolf guru and all.

“There’s something unnatural happening here, right?” Scott interjects, voice laden with worry. Stiles can feel that worry, a sensation that prickles under his own skin. “Something affected him, made him hurt himself?”

Deaton nods. “Unfortunately, yes,” he says. “I think I do know what we’re dealing with.”


	3. Projection

“It is a type of demon—a certain group of demons, to be more accurate. They are known as _Mercatores Terrorem_.”

“The merchants of terror,” Lydia translates, because Lydia, unlike Deaton, is actually inclined to speak in language normal people can understand.

“Demons?” Stiles asks. “Does this mean Derek’s possessed?”

Deaton shakes his head. “The merchants don’t work that way. Their priority is gathering the souls of as many individuals as they can; that is how they gain their strength. They cultivate psychological suffering until the victim reaches the point of ultimate desperation.”

“They drive them to suicide,” Lydia fills in.

“Indeed. Their influence prevents the body housing their target soul from shutting down, though; the victim cannot die despite his or her best efforts to do so. Then, the merchants will pay a visit, make them an offer in exchange for a merciful death.”

“So these things make you want to sell your soul to them so that you can _die_?” Stiles’ eyebrows are more than halfway up towards his hairline. He can feel them twitching. “That sounds like the worst deal ever.”

“They will also give the victim a task to undertake in order to seal the deal; usually this task is something violent, something which will continue to magnify fear and pain within the victim’s community and make it easier for the demons to get to their next victim.”

If these things prefer to go after people who are already suffering, then it makes sense that Derek would be a prime target. At least some part of this whole mess makes sense.

“So if a suicide attempt is the signal that their victim is ready to make one of these deals,” Lydia says, her voice toughened with that particular authoritative tone that Stiles knows is designed to iron out wavers and cover up the fact that she’s scared, “then doesn’t that mean they could come looking for Derek any second now?”

 

 

They take Derek back to Scott’s, because the whole pack can camp out there if need be, and it’s going to be a long night. Derek still hasn’t shown any signs of waking up. He keeps emanating a solid stream of unhappiness, though—which, confusingly, just makes Stiles want to stay closer to him even though it means feeling the second-hand misery more strongly.

He touches one hand to the side of Derek’s head and imagines that he can drain negative emotions the way Scott and the other werewolves can take away physical pain. He imagines drawing out the sadness and rolling it up into a floating ball of sharp, cold light, then jamming it into a lockbox and burying it under six feet of earth and mountain ash. Weirdly, he feels much better after imagining it. He does it again.

He thinks of Derek making him chicken soup, wishes that Derek were awake so that Stiles could return the favour.

It’s half past three in the morning, and the McCalls’ house is about as secure as any of them know how to make it; the doors and windows are bolted, the recently installed mountain ash alarm system is all in place, as well as lines of salt across any possible entrance point. Lydia’s sprinkling holy water she consecrated herself with a benediction from one of Deaton’s books around the walls. Stiles feels like he’s in an episode of _Supernatural_.

Deaton hadn’t been able to say what form the demons would appear in, but he had been pretty confident that these layers of protection would keep them out.

“I’m tired,” yawns Scott. “At least some of us should get some sleep so that we’re on our guard tomorrow.”

They all agree. Isaac and Melissa lay themselves down on the couches in the living room, and Scott curls up on a pile of cushions on the floor. It’s not the most comfortable arrangement for any of them, but it really does help to have the pack close. Before long Stiles and Lydia are the only ones left awake, both still too shaken to sleep.

“We’ll call Allison and her dad in the morning,” Lydia suggests, “see if they have any weapons that might work against demons. At the very least, they have to be warned that there are demons in town.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Stiles agrees. He hopes Chris has a special demon-killing knife, of something. Maybe even a demon-killing gun—a weapon that Stiles can operate from a safe distance away.

Lydia gets up and goes into the kitchen to make them both some tea, which is really very nice of her and the kind of everyday, friendly thing Stiles used to dream about them doing for each other. Even before he actually became a fan of tea-drinking, he’d imagine that his sophisticated, relationship-having self would enjoy it. Of course, back then it was always making tea and holding each other close, kissing, watching movies leaning comfortably into one another, maybe a few sexier things too. Stiles doesn’t know when exactly that changed, turned into making tea and comforting each other, researching together, bonding over their shared psychic mystery powers and using said psychic mystery powers as a team to help save their mutual friends. Stiles knows Lydia better than ever now, and he loves her more than he ever has, but he doesn’t love her the same way. The friendship they have is real, infinitely more real than Stiles’ early teenage fantasies, and somewhere along the line he’d simply found that he preferred it that way. She’d even kissed him that one time, to help pull him from a panic attack, and while her lips had been soft and sweet and he continues to savour the gesture to this day, he’s in no rush to do it again.

Not loving Lydia in a romantic sense anymore would probably be scrambling his brains if there wasn’t so much other scary, life-threatening crap taking precedence.

Stiles can hear the jug beginning to boil from down the hallway when Derek starts seizing.

Everything is sharp and cloudy at the same time, like it had been earlier when Stiles had let the fear in so that he could trace it back to Derek. He tries to breathe but it’s so, so hard, and somehow it doesn’t even feel important at this moment, so he lets it go. He leans over and holds on to Derek. It’s probably a really stupid idea, given that this is a werewolf out of control of his own body—a situation which may very well lead to Stiles being clawed to death—but it seems to make perfect sense right now.

_Please_ , Derek’s voice appears in Stiles’ head again. _Please let it be over_.

There’s a whispering, like a shower of autumn leaves dashed against pavement by a harsh gust of wind. Stiles can’t make out any words, but when Derek seems to because he replies;

_What do you want me to do?_

Oh, shit. It has to be the demon, making its deal with Derek. Why did they not consider the fact that it might communicate like this, instead of actually showing up in person? If it can access people’s minds to magnify their distress, why shouldn’t it be able to send messages that way as well?

If telepathic demons get to have powers of mental instant messaging, why doesn’t Stiles? That would be so useful. He’d never have to go over his cell phone plan again, for one thing.

_Whatever it is, Derek, don’t do it. Don’t listen to the demon,_ Stiles thinks as hard as he can. Maybe he even says it aloud; he can’t really tell. His body feels like one giant cramp, tense and burning sore and ignorant of the orders he gives it.   

_I won’t_ , Derek says firmly, and for a second Stiles thinks that maybe Derek’s heard him. _I won’t hurt him._

More unintelligible whispering.

_I won’t hurt any of them_ , Derek snarls. Then, _No, wait, please._

Suddenly Stiles is back in communion with all of his limbs. Said limbs are draped over Derek who’s still lying on the floor, but whose eyes are open now, blinking up at him. Lydia’s kneeling next to Stiles, tea-making forgotten, and the others have all been ripped unceremoniously away from sleep again too.

“Derek?” Scott moves tentatively towards him.

Derek’s eyes flicker over in Scott’s direction, then do the rounds of the whole group gathered around him. Stiles feels pinches of his embarrassment, shame.

“I’m fine,” Derek lies. He pulls himself up to a sitting position—and then, too quickly, to his feet. He wobbles and staggers across the floor, making for the door. Nobody bothers trying to stop him, since the moment he tries to cross the threshold he hits mountain ash and is barred from leaving.

“No, you’re not,” Stiles objects. “You’re so not fine, dude.”

Derek growls. “ _I said I’m fine_. You don’t get to decide how I’m feeling. You don’t get to sneak into my head and _spy on me_ and then tell everyone that I’m weak.”

Wow, tell us how you really feel, Derek. Stiles begins to feel hurt by the comment but he manages to stop that in its tracks. Derek’s in a monumentally shitty place, he’s feeling threatened, and he’s lashing out. Much as Stiles would like to point out that _he can’t help the fact that Derek’s feelings bug him all the time_ and that he’s _not calling Derek weak, just stating facts,_ he holds his irritation at bay.

“You’re not weak,” he says instead, keeping it calm and level, “but you are being attacked by demons whose entire MO is to make sure you’re as far from fine as it gets.”

Scott, unfortunately, is slightly less restrained. “You should be thanking Stiles,” he snaps at Derek. “He’s the reason we knew you were in trouble. It wasn’t exactly fun for him either, but he did what he needed to do to try and save you.”

The sense of shame grows stronger.

Stiles jumps in. “It’s not a big deal,” he says, holding a hand up at Scott in a _please stop talking_ kind of motion. He realises as he says it that is kind of was a big deal; he hasn’t felt that absolutely all-consumingly horrible since his mother died. He wonders whether the wolves in the room are picking up on the lie. He presses on; “The important thing now is figuring out how to get rid of these things before they steal Derek’s soul, or anybody else’s. Derek, what was the task they asked you to do?”

“How do you know they asked me for anything?” Derek says, churlish.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Because that’s how these things operate.”

“And because you were eavesdropping.”

Derek makes it incredibly hard to be patient and sympathetic sometimes.

“ _Not on purpose_ ,” Stiles insists. “I couldn’t escape from it. It feels like drowning, Derek, being anywhere near your thoughts or feelings right now. I end up frozen in this weird psychic limbo, forced to listen to you dealing with some demon, and I can’t even help you, or say anything to you.”

Derek’s brow furrows. “Huh. It’s not true, but you’re not lying,” he muses.

“Of course I’m not lying! Wait, what do you mean it’s not true?”

“I heard you,” Derek says. “I heard you telling me not to listen to the demon.”

Stiles’ eyes widen. He reaches for some kind of response but words have deserted him—which is always a terrible sign.  

 

↔

 

_Yo Scott_ , Stiles thinks, willing the words to reach his friend. _Can you hear me, buddy?_

Scott grins at him from across the room. “So awesome,” he says.

At least _someone_ appreciates Stiles’ powers. Derek’s avoiding Stiles so comprehensively now that he hasn’t seen or heard anything from or about the guy for three whole days. He figures it’s polite to let somebody call the shots after you (however inadvertently) violate the privacy of their mind, but he’s still a little hurt by it.

“You’re getting stronger very quickly,” Deaton commends him.

_It’s because I’m a badass_ , Stiles thinks at Deaton. Deaton doesn’t reply.

“Did you hear that?” he asks.

“Hear what?” Deaton seems confused. “I would guess that since your ability to project words into another’s head is still developing, it works best between yourself and those with whom you have the closest connections.”

“But then why was I able to do it with Derek?” Stiles wants to know. “I mean, I like Derek, he’s a... he’s an interesting dude. But we don’t really have a two-way thing going, let alone a _powerful connection_. He’s been holed up over in the death trap of a house of his avoiding me for three days straight.”

At that, a look of surprise crosses over Scott’s face. It deepens into concern.

“Derek’s at his house?” Scott asks.

“Um, yeah,” Stiles tells him. “Could you tell him to stop moping, please? I didn’t _intentionally—_ ”

“We haven’t been able to find him,” Scott interrupts. “We checked everywhere, including the Hale house. If he’s there, he’s hiding and covering his scent really effectively.”

Oh.

“That can’t be good, can it? Surely it has to be really bad given the circumstances. Do you think he’s working on the task the demons gave him?”

Deaton shakes his head. “I doubt it. Usually such tasks would be quick to execute—very public murders are a popular choice, spreading fear throughout the local population. I think Derek is instead attempting to keep himself from following through with the demons’ instructions.”

“That’s good, right?” Stiles says. Surely it’s good that Derek’s not shredding some innocent civilian in the middle of a crowded supermarket. That’s never not a good thing. So why does Deaton seem so sad about it?

“It’s not necessary good for Derek,” Deaton explains. “If fulfilling their ends of the demons’ bargains buys victims merciful deaths, refusing to do so results in the direct opposite; a half-life of immense, prolonged suffering, of mentally and physically wasting away.”

“Stiles,” Scott says urgently. “You have to help us find him.”

 

 

Stiles follows the trail of angsty breadcrumbs, Scott and Isaac (who Scott finally intimidated into getting over his fear of Stiles’ mind-probing and helping with the Derek Problem) in tow. Derek, eternal martyr that he is, is holed up not _in_ the Hale house, but in one of the dungeons underneath it.

“Kate tortured him down here,” Scott remarks, wincing as they follow the musty tunnel. There’s some kind of chemical spilt all over the floor, odorous enough to bring tears to Stiles’ eyes. This must be how he threw the werewolves off his scent; it makes sense that Derek is plenty familiar with these tricks.

Derek has somehow managed to string _himself_ up with cuffs and chains that buzz, consistently racking his body with an electric current. Scott looks horrified by the setup, but the strength of the emotional vibes Stiles is picking up makes him wonder whether Derek is mostly just using the pain as a distraction from his thoughts, as well as a restraint.

“Get out!” He shouts at them as they enter, and Scott switches off the electricity.

“No way,” Scott says definitively. “We’re not letting you do this. It’s stupid. We’re going to find a way to help you.”

“Whatever,” Derek grunts. Obviously even he has learned not to argue too hard with Scott. Besides, Scott’s the alpha now. Ha. “Whatever you do, just get _Stiles_ out of here,” Derek continues.

Ouch.

“Okay, look here buddy. I know you’ve got your problems with me, especially now that I have superpowers too, but right now you really need to suck it up so that we can try and save your ass.”

“No,” says Derek. “You don’t understand. It’s hard enough to resist, when I could make it stop hurting with a quick swipe of my claws. But with you right here... it would be too easy. You’re not safe, neither of us are.”

Confusing as Derek’s tirade is, Stiles is starting to think he knows exactly what Derek’s talking about. He just needs confirmation.

Cautiously, he steps forward. “Too easy to do what, Derek?” he asks.

“Too easy to do what they want,” Derek says, voice suddenly small. “They want me to kill you.”


	4. Chicken Soup (For The Soul)

They all agree that Derek needs to be kept someplace where he can’t harm anybody—specifically Stiles—in accordance with his own request. They also all agree that he is not locking himself back in his underground torture chamber and going through this rough patch alone. The solution, at this point, is the McCalls’ basement—a usually-barren, largely forgotten room with walls that are already reinforced with mountain ash. Stiles lays down an additional thick line of it all around the edges of the room, excluding a bit of space over by the stairwell so that visitors have somewhere to hang out. He and Scott bring Derek a mattress and blankets so he isn’t left sitting on the cold hard floor. Stiles refuses to indulge his masochistic desire to lie there on the concrete.

There’s someone down there with him whenever possible. Stiles takes a turn in the middle of the night when he’s jarred awake by an unpleasant but not unfamiliar feeling. Descending the stairs to the basement, he finds Derek sitting on his mattress, breathing in and out through gritted teeth. Stiles doesn’t say anything to him, just settles on the chair they’ve set up for whoever’s keeping Derek company and flicks through _Wuthering Heights_ , his latest English reading assignment. He resists the temptation to make any Heathcliff/Derek comparisons because he knows Heathcliff’s story isn’t going to end too well. Derek’s, he’s determined to believe, is going to get better from here on out.

Stiles’ stomach growls at him. He always gets hungry late at night.

“I’m just going to get some food,” he tells Derek. “I’ll be right upstairs. Back soon.”

Derek doesn’t answer.

Stiles rummages through the McCalls’ pantry, makes a small noise of victory when he finds what he’s searching for. He heats the soup up on the stove, gets out bowls and salt and pepper and fills a couple of cups with orange juice. All the crockery and cutlery is plastic kiddie stuff because frankly they don’t know what Derek might be capable of right now, and Stiles isn’t going to use proper eating utensils right in front of him. He loads everything onto a tray.

Derek keeps his distance as Stiles places his half of the midnight snack on the floor, on Derek’s side of the mountain ash line. He gets up to retrieve it only once Stiles is sitting back in his chair a safe distance away. It’s strange, Derek treating him like this, like he’s so desperate not to break him when he’s had no qualms about shoving him against various hard surfaces in the past.

Derek sniff the soup almost suspiciously before lifting a spoonful to his mouth.

“It’s good,” he says, sounding awkward. “Thank you.”

Stiles tries not to let his surprise show, to make a big deal of it, because that’s a sure-fire way to make Derek close off again.

“Just returning the favour,” he shrugs. “Nothing you haven’t done for me before.”

There’s a long pause while the both dig in to their food.

“I really thought you might be dying,” Derek says, pushes the words out like he’s been working up to them for a while. “When Scott texted me. He just said that Peter was an alpha, that he’d bitten you, and that it wasn’t healing. I’ve seen that happen before, and...”

“I know,” Stiles jumps in. He’s heard the story of Paige, and he really doesn’t want to make Derek retell any of it. “And I’m totally flattered that you were worried about me, y’know. Even if I don’t totally get why.”

Derek frowns at that. Stiles feels a rush of emotion so confused that he can’t even place what it is Derek’s feeling.

“You matter,” Derek says, the words quick and quiet and a little rough, like he’s had to coerce them into existing. It should sound like a tag line right out of some self-esteem campaign—but it doesn’t. It’s not just tossed out there. There’s something steady pushing underneath it, like Derek wants to communicate more but can’t verbalise it.

“You do too,” Stiles counters, a little awkwardly. “You know that, right? You’re important to the pack, and you’re important to me. None of us want to lose you to this.”

There’s a wash of warmth, optimism, vying with a heavy side of disbelief. Derek may have colossally bad judgment and project a generally cynical attitude, but Stiles has realised as he’s come to know him better that Derek is actually an extremely hopeful person. He has a lot of trust, a lot of hope, and while he puts it in entirely the wrong people a lot of the time—Peter and Jennifer being prime examples—the fact remains that he keeps trying even after everything that’s happened to him. He has a lot of issues with himself, that’s for sure, but he’s still optimistic about other people, like all his bad luck has to be due to wear off sometime soon and maybe the next person will actually turn out to be the friend they claim they are. Stiles finds it makes him want desperately to see that something ends well for Derek, for once.

“No,” says Derek. “I mean you _matter_. Enough that I’ve been scared of you getting inside my head and finding it out. Anyway, I think I was going to say something to you about it, when you were bitten and I thought it might be my last chance—then you were fine, and it went back to being impossible to bring it up. Now that I’m on the way out I might as well, though.”

Um. Stiles _thinks_ he understands what Derek’s trying to tell him here—or he might, if the context was different, and this wasn’t being directed at Stiles himself. It has to be the longest and the most earnest string of words Derek’s ever voluntarily offered him, and Stiles is having a little (or a lot) of trouble processing.

“You _like_ me?” he blurts out.

Derek nods. His face is already shutting off, and Stiles doesn’t want that, but he needs to press this just a little so he can be certain.

“Like, _like-_ like?”

Derek raises an eyebrow, amused. Amusement is better than emotional closure, so Stiles takes that as a victory.

“Yes, Stiles,” he sighs, like he’s dealing with a five year old. Stiles reviews his own words and decides that’s actually kind of fair. Not that he cares. He doesn’t care if he sounds like a five year old whose dolls or action figures are getting pretend-married because Derek Hale apparently likes him. _Like-_ likes him. Finds him attractive in some way. Wants to get a piece of the Stiles.

“Heh,” he chuckles. “Didn’t see that one coming.”

“You don’t have to think anything of it,” Derek says, hiding behind his soup bowl, which has to be empty by now. “You can just forget I mentioned it.”

Stiles flails around in protest. “What? No—dude, unless _you_ want to forget about it, I’d kind of like to remember this moment. Possibly forever. You’ve gotta forgive me for not expecting you,” he gestures to Derek’s rugged, muscular person, “to take any interest in this,” he gestures to his not-at-all-rugged self.

Before Derek can respond, he’s groaning and clutching his head, falling down to his mattress and sending out a flood of psychic agony all around the room, like the demons are hitting him with a fresh round of their poison. Stiles has seen Derek in pain plenty of times—many times, _too_ many—but never quite like this. He’s shaking, silent sobs wracking him. Curled in on himself he looks so vulnerable.

Stiles is crossing the mountain ash barrier before he completely realises what he’s doing. In a few strides he’s crouched beside Derek, cupping his cheek. Like before, he imagines drawing out the pain, balling it up and burying it somewhere deep where it won’t be found. It’s almost instinctive, and it feels right, so he doesn’t fight it.

_What are you doing?_ Derek’s voice cuts through Stiles’ thoughts, the words directed at him loud and clear amongst a general litany of _it hurts, it hurts, it hurts._

“I’m not leaving you alone,” Stiles explains.

He is a caring person by nature. When he cares about somebody he does it with his whole mind and his whole body. He could, at times, be fairly described as obsessive in his caring. Ruthless, if something’s threatening his dad, or his friends. Reckless is a given. He’s not sure he’d be capable of sitting across the room and passively watching on as Derek suffered like this even if he tried.

_No, I mean how are you doing that?_

“Uh,” Stiles is confused. “Doing what?”

_Dulling the pain._

And then Stiles realises that it isn’t just him feeling better, when he does his imaginary ball of light pain-draining thing. It’s Derek too.

“Oh my god,” he says, a little giddy. He lays his other hand on Derek’s other cheek and starts doing the whole routine in double. “Oh my god, it actually works.”

_Don’t hurt yourself_ , Derek pleads. _You don’t deserve to feel my pain._

“Like you deserve this either,” Stiles shoves his protests aside. “Besides, Derek—this doesn’t hurt me at all. For the first time, my powers are actually proving themselves to be awesome.”

Derek doesn’t argue any more, just slumps closer to Stiles until his head is resting in Stiles’ lap. Stiles smooths his palms over the roughness of his stubble, runs fingers through Derek’s short hair, and keeps going until Derek is calm enough to fall asleep.

 

 

Stiles wakes up to Scott yelling his name in panic, and to the weight of Derek’s head against his thigh.

“Stiles! What are you doing? Get out of there!” Scott’s practically jumping up and down over near the stairs, looking like he might be about to push through the mountain ash line the way he had done to get to Jennifer, when he’d first become a true alpha.

“Don’t strain yourself, bro,” Stiles waves a hand lazily—or sleepily. Both? “I’m fine here.”

“The entire point of all this protection was to keep Derek away from you, and now you’re just _stepping into his space_?” Scott’s really not calming down.

Derek’s sitting up now too, as awake as he can be when he’s this exhausted. Stiles gets clumsily to his feel and walks over to Scott, stepping pointedly over the ash.

“There. Happy?” he asks.

Scott nods. “I still don’t know why you were in there in the first place.”

“I was helping, Scott. I discovered this new way of using my powers last night, where I can take away emotional pain, like you take away the physical stuff. It was really cool. And really helpful.” The statement comes out with surety; this is more self-belief that Stiles has had in a long time, possibly ever. He was very helpful. For once, there’s no niggling voice in the back of his head disputing that.

He’s seen people hurting all his life—his mom when she was ill; his dad trying to cope with it all; Scott when his parents finally split up for good; Scott’s mom rebuilding everything herself in the aftermath. Lately, he’s seen his friends hurt in just about every way possible, and now there’s a monster in town that wants to manipulate and spread all that hurt. He’s seen people hurting and he’s wanted nothing more than to be able to take that burden away—and this part of his true beta psychic whatever is actually spot on when it comes to what abilities he’d have wished for.

Scott doesn’t look particularly pleased for him, though.

“What?” Stiles pouts.

“I just... you can’t go taking on everyone else’s pain, Stiles. It’s not the same—psychological pain doesn’t just heal up and go away like physical pain does.”

“ _Oh_. No, dude. I don’t even feel it, that’s the best part!”

_Now_ Scott’s looking at him with an appropriate measure of awe.

“Stiles, man,” he says, clapping him on the shoulder. “That’s the _coolest_.”

 

↔

 

Everyone is gathered in the McCalls’ living room. Stiles sits by his dad, who’s wearing his typical worried face. Stiles is tempted to lay a hand on him and take away some of that stress, but he figures it’d be better if he explained his magic powers before using them and potentially scaring the crap out of the poor man. He does that often enough already.

The Argents have brought a book with them, rather than a collection of badass demon-fighting weapons, which disappoints Stiles somewhat.

“Very few sightings of the _Mercatores Terrorem_ have been reported in the hunter circles we’re connected with during the past hundred years,” Chris addresses the group, “and nothing new has been discovered about how to fight them in much longer than that. There have been various writings describing the demons and the desolation they can leave in their wake, but there are no accounts of hunters taking them on, let alone killing any of them. When it comes to how that might be done, the best information we’ve got to go on comes from murky legends originally recorded in old illuminated manuscripts.”

“And what do these murky legends say?” asks Stiles’ dad. “Anything we can take a chance on?”

Chris is radiating uncertainty. It’s more than just a fleeting emotion, too—it lingers on him like it’s just a part of his everyday aura. Stiles is betting he’s been uncertain of almost everything in his life ever since his family started tearing itself apart—first Kate, then Allison’s mom, then Gerard. Since Allison’s bouts of instability led to him discover new sides to his daughter, too—sides that included not only the inclination to date werewolves but also the propensity to shoot arrows into squealing, begging teenagers without the measure of remorse that kind of thing should warrant. Since he tried to retire from it all only to be dragged back in and almost become one in a spate of human sacrifices.

Stiles hasn’t always liked Chris—in fact, he’s still not sure he likes him now—but he has to admit that as hunters go, he’s one of the good ones. Maybe even the best. And he’s helping them with a problem that isn’t directly his right now.

“‘A merchant of terror may only be slain by the reflection of its own face,’” Chris reads out. “That’s the best translation I’ve got.”

“So we need to find the one that’s got Derek’s soul in its sights and, what, force it to look into a mirror?” Stiles asks. “Are these guys like Narcissus, or something? Also, do we even know what they look like?”

“They’re described as ordinary men with cold embraces,” Chris says.

“Deaton said Derek was freezing cold when we found him. Do you think it’s possible that they could literally be cold to the touch?”

“The question is, are we willing to shake hands with one in order to find out,” Allison asks, and while they may have done stupider stuff before, she has a valid point.

“Can’t we just say _Christo_ and see whose eyes go black?” Stiles suggests hopefully.

Scott grins at the reference, because pretty much all the television Stiles has watched, he’s watched with Scott, but nobody else seems to get it. Except... Chris is giving off strange vibes. His face is a perfect mask of frustrated-impatient-unimpressed, but underneath it there’s a little tug of amusement, almost fondness.

Could it be that Chris Argent is a closet _Supernatural_ fan?

Oh man, Stiles loves that idea about as much as he’s ever loved an idea in all his life—and he’s betting the farm Chris is a Dean kind of guy. Stiles is not going to out him in front of everybody, but he tucks that little diamond away for possible banter and/or blackmail to be enjoyed at a later date.

He wonders whether Derek has seen _Supernatural_ , wonders what TV Derek likes. Does Derek even watch TV? He’ll have to ask. Maybe they could watch _Supernatural_ together—

—on second thought, if Stiles watches TV with Derek it’s going to need to be something that doesn’t involve anybody’s family members burning to death in house fires. God, he’s glad he followed this train of thought in his own mind before he went right on ahead and brought it up, out loud, in front of Derek.

They know that the holy water will work because that’s pretty well established, and Lydia’s already learned a couple of exorcisms that might come in handy if they can’t figure out how to actually _kill_ the demons. Beyond that, the best plan they’ve come up with so far is more or less to lure the baddies into a room full of mirrors so that they’ll definitely be confronted by their own reflections. Maybe it’ll be like the Bloody Mary episode...

Or maybe it won’t be like _Supernatural_ at all. Stiles doesn’t know why he’d want his life to be any more like that show than it already is. Isn’t it Beacon Hills’ turn for something ordinary and non-violent, like _How I Met Your Mother_ or _Antique Roadshow_?

Anyway, there’s a dance studio in the school, the walls of which consist almost entirely of mirrors, so they figure it’s a fairly good shot. Tomorrow’s a Saturday so there shouldn’t be anyone around, and they’ll sweep the place first so that Stiles’ dad can tell anyone who does happen to be wandering around to leave. All that’s left to figure out is how to lure the demons to the right place.

“If Derek and I are there, we could pretend that Derek’s going to follow through on his part of the deal?” Stiles puts forward.

“No,” says just about everyone in unison.

“We’re not putting you in that kind of danger, son,” says Dad, and damn it, that tone of voice never fails to make Stiles feel horrible about whatever it is he’s done to trigger it.

“We can trust Derek,” Stiles says, firm. “I trust him. Besides, I can help keep his situation under control.”

There are a few raised eyebrows around the place, so Stiles figures he may as well lay all his cards on the table—or almost all of them.

“So I kind of have telepathic powers,” he says, going for a casual, _sudden-telepathy-is-not-a-big-deal_ kind of air.

On a scale of One to Why Does He Even Try With These Things, it quickly becomes apparent that he’s been unsuccessful.

Once he’s finished explaining everything to their merry band of demon hunters, they get back to the actual important planning side of things.

“There’s a demon summoning spell in one of the grimoires I’ve been reading,” says Lydia. “It calls for some pretty dark stuff, though. Cat bones, the ashes of something beloved, blood from a supernatural being and blood from a human. You also have to pledge a fraction of your soul to the demon.”

“Nobody is pledging any of anyone’s soul!” Scott insists, putting his foot down, all alpha-like and commanding. “Maybe we should just go out and find the demons, and each take a smaller mirror with us.”

 

 

They’re taking a quick cooling off break when the cold despair creeps into Stiles’ awareness once again. He races towards the basement, towards Derek. It’s not hitting him quite as hard as it did before, not swallowing him down quite as deep, but he still staggers under it, almost tripping down the last couple of stairs. His knees hit the cold concrete floor, but he only notices this in an objective sense; the bruising, grazing pain is insignificant—like you don’t really notice it if you stub your toe while you’re busy running away from a huge explosion.

_Stiles_ , Derek’s voice breaks a small way through the haze. It sounds muted, as if it’s passing through water on its way to him. _Stiles are you okay? Stiles what’s happening—_

He reaches out for Derek, not with his arms but with his consciousness—but the trail of the pain takes him in a different direction. It’s not Derek who’s hurting this time. Stiles is half-aware of his surroundings, and he manages to crawl over the mountain ash line to Derek, who wraps his arms around him, envelopes him like he wishes he could squeeze all the fear out.

There’s a wash of warmth, and this time the feeling _is_ coming from Derek. It’s almost hilariously incongruous with everything he knows of Derek, but the only way Stiles can describe the sensation right now is to say that it feels like sunshine. Warm and bright, adding a touch of yellow to everything so that it all seems cheerful. It’s exactly what he needs, and Stiles holds on to it tightly.

The episode tapers off after a while—Stiles isn’t sure how long—and he regains the wherewithal to get to his feet.

“I should go and tell the others that something’s happened,” he says, reluctantly extricating himself from Derek.

Derek nods, but the look on his face is the one he wears when he has something to say, something he needs to say but doesn’t want to have to.

“What’s wrong?” Stiles prompts.

“Is it—is it always like _that_?”

_Worse_ , Stiles doesn’t say. _When it’s you, so much worse_.

“Pretty much,” he does his best to wave it off like it’s nothing. It’s not Derek’s fault he’s had a horrible life, or that his misery is currently being enhanced by evil misery demons.

When he reaches the living room he finds everyone standing around Lydia. Allison’s got an arm around her shoulders, and Stiles’ dad is handing her a glass of water. The look on her face tells Stiles that she’s just seen exactly what he felt.

“Lydia,” he says, and his voice comes out nothing like he expects it to. It’s croaky, as though he’s been crying. He brings a hand up to his face and finds his cheeks wet. Oops. “What was it this time?”

Lydia sniffs delicately, takes a sip of her drink and then answers, “I think they’ve got another victim.”

 

↔

 

Stiles doesn’t even have to trace the anguish to its source, because his dad is called out to the home of a guy who’s reported shooting himself in the head and surviving, much to his own disappointment. The guy’s name is Tate.

“I remember Mr. Tate,” Stiles’ dad says. “Poor man lost his wife and daughters in a car accident several years ago. It’s actually one of the cases I’ve been planning to reopen now that I have a more... enlightened perspective.”

“Sounds like a prime target for the mercatores terrorem,” Chris says. “Plenty of pre-existing trauma to work with. What are we going to do about him?”

“Right now, I’m going to go and do my job,” answers Dad. “And make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone.”

“I’m needed at the hospital,” Melissa adds. “I can keep an eye on him there, though; make sure he stays put.”

“Wait,” Scott interrupts, “I think we need to tell him what’s happening. The demons will be coming to him, and he needs to know that he can’t listen to them—that we’re going to find a way to kill them, but it won’t do him any good if he’s already sold them his soul.”

Scott’s right. Without some shred of hope to cling to, without the knowledge that someone else out there can at least pretend to understand, nobody’s going to survive feeling that low. Stiles has first-hand experience.

“Let me go,” he offers. “I can drain some of the pain away. I can talk to him—even if he’s knocked out with sedatives, I can project the words into his mind.”

“But these demons, they told Derek to kill Stiles, didn’t they?” Stiles’ dad protests. “What if they asked Tate the same? What if _he_ tries to hurt Stiles?”

“I don’t think they would have asked him that,” Stiles realises out loud, as he does sometimes. “Mr. Tate doesn’t know me at all. He doesn’t care. Derek does. Yes, the targets the demons assign will be strategic for their own ends, for spreading more pain through the town—but they’re also chosen to torment the person who’s meant to kill them. My bet is that it’s going to be someone that brings out an emotional response in Mr. Tate.”

Dad sighs. “Fine. Take Scott and Isaac with you,” he turns to the two of them. “Keep him out of trouble, will you?”

Scott nods.

“Yes sir,” says Isaac.

 

↔

 

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Tate is in bad shape. His body’s still on the hospital bed but his mind echoes with a new wave of hurt and confusion every minute. Stiles takes his wrist between his fingers and tugs at the pain, extracts and buries it, takes more and more until a tiny bit of clarity filters through the haze.

_Where is the pain going?_ Stiles hears Tate ask himself. _Am I finally dead?_

_No, you’re not,_ Stiles tells him.

There’s a brief jolt of shock.

_Who are you? Another demon? What do you want from me?_

_Relax, I’m not a demon. My name’s Stiles, and I’m just a guy with a few special abilities. Taking your pain away is one of them._

_And mind-reading is another?_

_Technically it’s not just—okay, yeah, close enough. Anyway. How did you know about the demons?_ Stiles is supposed to be _warning_ him about the demons.

_One came to me. After I shot myself and didn’t die._

Crap. _You can’t listen to it, okay? Whatever it asked you to do, you don’t have to do it. My friends and I are working on a way to make them go away._

_Your friends, are they psychic too?_

_No, they have other talents._

_Why should I believe you? Why would you help me?_ Tate’s growing fearful again, fear that’s probably Stiles’ fault. There’s no other way to do this, though, so he presses on.

_Because these demons, their endgame is to terrify the entire town, bring it down bit by bit until they own every soul. And because I have a friend in the same situation as you, who I’ll do anything and everything I can to help, and helping him requires the same steps as helping you._

Tate seems to think about it for a moment and then resolve that he doesn’t have a lot left to lose by believing Stiles.

↔

 

A couple of days later Melissa announces that Mr. Tate has been allowed to go home from the hospital. They’ve replaced the piece of his skull that was blow out, and written it off as some kind of medical miracle that the damage to his brain hasn’t caused the kind of shutdown that it should by all means have done. There had been practically no blood loss from the head wound, which nobody could account for. A few people suggested that some bizarre and isolated version of shock could be responsible, but Stiles is sure even the ones whose theory that is know better than to truly believe it for a minute. He wishes that knowing more than the doctors didn’t always have to mean knowing shitty things he’d ignore if he could. Notably the existence of demons.

There’s been no sign of new demon activity in the past seventy-two hours, but there’s also been no progress in terms of planning, which is making everybody restless. Derek’s still downstairs most of the time, though Stiles is learning to take larger amounts of pain away more quickly, so sometimes Derek’s in a good enough headspace to pull himself up the stairs and sit in the kitchen for a while, open up the windows and breath in the fresh air.

He wonders where the negative feelings go when he takes them away.

“Are they destroyed?” he asks Deaton when the vet comes over to check how things are.

Deaton shakes his head. “All emotions are a kind of energy. Usually they are expended through some form of action; you might take out anger through aggression, or sadness through crying, for instance. When you extract them, Stiles, you must be placing them somewhere out in the atmosphere.”

“I kinda imagine them being locked away in a box, or buried in a grave,” Stiles says. “Does that mean those places are real and I’m actually sending them there?”

“I would think that unlikely, though with practice you may be capable of that. I believe the places you visualise are more like a key to rediscovering that emotional energy. If you once again visualise the safe where you locked a certain feeling, that may be the key to unlocking and using it.”

Stiles is about seventy-four percent sure that Deaton’s just making all of this up, but he can’t sense what he’s feeling. Draining Derek’s sadness away so frequently has kind of tired him out, or maybe just desensitised him to other emotions. Like when you lift something really heavy, and then everything else seems especially light.

Even if he could harness this emotion-energy, Stiles doesn’t know what he’d be expected to use it for. Crippling your enemies with excruciating psychological pain kind of sounds more like a supervillain’s MO than a good guy’s. In fact, it sounds exactly like the MO of the demons they’re currently attempting to hunt.

 Eventually Deaton leaves and Derek manages to fall into some much-needed—if shallow—sleep, leaving Stiles to chill alone in front of the TV because the others are all at school and work.

He tunes in to the police scanner in the background. There’s a lot of nothing on the scanner, as usual, and Stiles is almost drifting off to sleep when it suddenly light up with,

“33, a 653M at 72 York. Linked to 207. 10-73?”

_Threatening phone call at 72 York, linked to a kidnapping, how do you copy?_ Stiles translates.

His cell vibrates in his pocket barely a minute later.

“Stiles,” his dad says as soon as he picks up, “I might need your help with something.”     


	5. Cold Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long since the last update - I've been back at uni which means writing classes demanding the majority of my time, as well as law classes demanding the entirety of my soul.

“Scott, can you get a lock on her scent?” the Sheriff asks quietly as they stand in the bedroom of Abigail Francis, a girl about their age who went missing yesterday. He parents received a phone call this afternoon, a somewhat garbled message to the effect of _I have to kill your daughter, I’m sorry, I just don’t have a choice._

“I think so,” Scott replies, holding a pale blue hoodie up to his nose and inhaling in a way that Stiles can’t help but notice would be really very creepy if the circumstances were different.

Dad and Scott have apparently agreed that they’re looking for Abigail the werewolf way and the police way before they resort to the Stiles way. _We don’t want you needlessly hurting yourself,_ they’d said. Stiles appreciates that sentiment, but he thinks he might appreciate it more if they were finding Abigail a little bit more quickly. He can already feel dread hanging all around him; it wouldn’t take _that_ much out of him just to reel it in and try to pinpoint its source. He’s getting better at controlling it—or, at the very least, developing a tolerance.

“Okay, got it,” Scott says.

“Let’s go, then.”

Abigail was last seen near the school, apparently getting into a white car. The witness hasn’t been able to tell them any more than that, though they have a pretty good idea whose car it was.

Sure enough, Scott leads them out into the woods towards Mr. Tate’s house.

“We should have kept a closer eye on him,” Scott laments. “What if he’s already killed her?”

“He hasn’t.” Stiles is sure of it. “I’d have felt it if he did. They’d have let him die, if he’d done as they asked.”

When the ring the doorbell, Mr. Tate actually comes and invites them in. He reeks of misery, but he at least gives the impression of wanting to cooperate, to let them help him.

“Where’s Abigail Francis?” Stiles’ dad asks seriously.

Mr. Tate’s forehead collapses in on itself. “She’s in the cellar,” he says, not looking any of them in the eye. “You have to understand,” he starts, “I never really wanted to kill her. I knew that the moment I got her back here. She was Malia’s best friend in kindergarten. She was over at our house so often she’d accidentally start calling me ‘dad’. And I couldn’t... I _can’t_ —”

“Okay, Mr. Tate,” Dad says, gruffly soothing. “This is a difficult situation for us all. It’s extremely fortunate that you held out.”

To get to the cellar, Tate directs them down a slim staircase. The room itself is tiny, and much of the limited space is occupied by wine racks. A light bulb hangs from the ceiling, too-bright against the dank, dusty walls. Tied to a chair in the centre of the cellar is Abigail. Her cheeks are smudgy with dried tears and mascara. Her aura is one of confusion; fear turned to resignation turned to hope again at the sight of the Sheriff.

“It’s alright,” Scott and Dad are both saying. Dad gets to Abigail first, slips the fabric gag from her mouth. There isn’t really room for them all to be moving around at once, so Scott and Stiles stay back on the stairs trying to make their presences seem comforting rather than threatening.

Suddenly Stiles feels a spike in Abigail’s anxiety. “Oh no—” she starts to say, and before she finishes, Stiles understands why.

Rough hands grab him, one wrenching him by the collar, the other swinging across his ribcage to haul him up from where he’s standing on the steps to the cellar door, then shoving him to the floor. Mr. Tate slams the door while Stiles is down, bolting it so that Scott and his dad can only pound against the wood and shout. It won’t be long before Scott manages to break the door down, even from his awkward position on the narrow staircase, but Mr. Tate has Stiles alone for a minute or so at least, and a hell of a lot can go wrong in that time.

The curved knife Tate’s now holding up for Stiles to see illustrates that last point fairly well. For a horrible, horrible moment, he thinks that maybe he was wrong about the demons not asking Tate to kill him. Maybe he’s going to end up being sacrificed after all? For fuck’s sake, they’d just _fixed_ the whole human sacrifice problem in this town. What on earth is _wrong_ with Beacon Hills?

Then Tate says, “I know what you are.” It kind of throws Stiles off-balance.

“What I what?” he asks.

“What you _are_ ,” Tate says again, like repetition is making his vague, threatening comments any clearer. “After you came and spoke to me at the hospital, using your mind powers, I began to think. Began to look more seriously at all the myths and legends I’d heard over the years but never believed in. I thought about the way my—” he sniffs, “my family died, scratched up and dragged away by wild animals, and then I realised what night it was when it all happened. The _full moon_.”

Stiles’ breath catches in his throat. Tate may be acting crazy right now, but he also just might happen to be on to something.

“So,” he continues. “I know that there are werewolves in this town. And I know that you have supernatural powers. It wasn’t that hard to piece it together from there. You’re the sheriff’s kid, so he’s clearly turning a blind eye to all the damage your kind have done. Including my family’s murder.”

Stiles speaks even as his brain works on comprehending Tate’s speech.

“Oh, man,” he says. “So close, and yet sofar. Seriously, you don’t even know. But think about this, okay: even if werewolves killed your family all those years ago, I was only a kid at the time. A kid looked after by the Sheriff, whose job it is to detain dangerous people—so I can guarantee that I would have been locked down. All this is quite aside from the fact that _I am really, definitely not a werewolf._ ”

“I’m not saying that _you_ killed them, not personally,” Tate replies. “I don’t want revenge from you, not tonight.”

“Then what _do_ you want?”

Tate’s advancing on him, and Stiles backs away until he’s stopped suddenly by the wall behind him. He tries to duck around him, but Tate’s close enough to catch him by the arm and hold him.

“If I were a werewolf, do you really think you’d be able to pin me down like this?” he splutters as he fights Tate’s grip.

Tate ignores the comment. “All I need from you is this,” he says, drawing the knifepoint along the skin of Stiles’ arm. The slicing pain makes Stiles’ eyes water, but he _doesn’t_ cry. He won’t. Tate sweeps the running blood off with the flat edge of his blade. He looks closely at it.“The blood of a supernatural being,” he says, pleased.

Stiles remembers hearing those words...

_The spell_. The dark spell Lydia had found for summoning the mercatores terrorem.

 

 

Stiles is a little woozy, what with all the pain humming around him from everyone in the house. He tries pulling it out of the air and stowing it away, but there’s so much of it that he never relieves the tension for more than a few seconds.

Things happen very fast. Scott breaks through the cellar door. He and Dad race towards Stiles while Abigail wisely heads for the door. Tate starts muttering something weird in Latin. Stiles wishes, not for the first time, that he was fluent in Latin. And then an end table goes up in roaring flames.

“What did you do,” Dad asks slowly, in a voice that says he’s well aware he won’t like the answer.

Mr. Tate turns around from where he’s standing by the flaming end table turned black altar.

“Magic,” he says, eyes a little wide, more than a little manic. “Demons are real, and werewolves are real, and magic is real, and I’m going to use it to summon the evil bastards who want to make me kill my daughter’s friend. I’ll convince them to make a new deal, and then they’ll finally let all the pain be over.”

“Shit,” says Stiles. Most of the time, being right makes him very happy—but on this occasion it really doesn’t. “Where did you even find this spell?”

“The internet.”

“And you do realise that summoning these demons means selling them a part of your soul?” Stiles supposes it almost makes sense that the mercatores terrorem would be happy for this kind of spellwork to be easily researchable. They get a cut from every user.

“Better than my whole soul, don’t you think?” Tate shrugs. “Which is how it’s going to end up anyway.”

Hang on—“Also, you know I’m _really, really_ not a werewolf.” Clearly the purpose of Stiles’ blood had been to fulfil the ‘supernatural creature’ requirement of the spell—but Stiles is just about the only one of his friends who is genuinely _not_ some form of creature of the night. He’s so much a human that even his werewolf-bitten form is to _stay human._

Tate looks at him, clearly trying to pick out the evidence of the lie on his face. His certainty wavers when he doesn’t find it.

“Then what are you?” he asks.

“Just a human,” answers Stiles.

“But you can read minds!” Tate protests. “You’re a supernatural being!”

Suddenly it’s cold. There’s no breeze bringing in cool air; the air is so still it feels like pack ice around him.

And then there’s a voice.

“He’s right, Stiles,” it says. Stiles doesn’t like the way it utters his name—that name is _his_ ; it doesn’t belong in this stranger’s mouth. “You can be both, and it so happens that you are.”

The demon looks like an ordinary guy, mostly. He’s got short spiny hair and he wears tatty jeans and a leather jacket. Stiles can’t properly meet his gaze past the pair of large, dark sunglasses that sit like insect eyes on his face, though he’s not sure he wants to.

Stiles slips his hands into his pockets, uses the right one to dial Derek’s number. Obviously he can’t hold it up to his ear and have a proper conversation, but Derek’s hearing will ensure he picks up whatever conversation goes on between the people in this room.

“So, you’re the dickhead who’s making people’s lives a living hell,” he addresses the demon. “Right here, in the flesh.”

“Oh, I’m responsible for poor, pathetic Mr. Tate, here,” the demon says. “But not your wolf friend, Mr. Hale. He belongs to Cal, one of my comrades.”

“How many of you are there?” Stiles asks.

“More than enough to turn this town of yours into a cesspool of suffering, and to harvest every last soul,” it brags. “Then again, I alone am more than enough to do a little job like that.”

“So you’re coming alone, then? Your buddies swinging by the Tate house anytime soon too? Should we put the kettle on?” Stiles snarks. He really hopes Derek is getting the message— _demon douchebag at the Tate house; SOS._

All Stiles can do until the others arrive— _if_ they do in fact arrive—is keep the focus on talking instead of killing.

 “You said your friend’s name was Cal,” he goes on. “What’s yours?”

“Luke,” the demon replies.

“Pretty average name for a demon,” Stiles points out. “I’d really thought you guys would be a little more dramatic than this.”

The air grows colder still for a moment, the lights flickering all through the house. The fire on the end table flares up again, roaring but never seeming to burn through the wood. It’s kind of like Stiles imagines the burning bush in Exodus would have been. Stiles looks at Luke, and it has to be a trick of the light— _has to be_ —but he could swear that out of the shadows between the intermittent flashes of the room’s lightbulbs, dark shapes that look something like bat’s wings are gathering at his back, strange twists above his skull-like face that resemble ram’s horns. Chances are it’s not his real form, just an image the dickwad is trying to project in order to freak them all out, but... Stiles would be lying if he tried to say that Luke’s efforts had been entirely unsuccessful.

“Luke is what I go by nowadays, for short,” the demons explains. Either Stiles is imagining it, or his voice is a deeper rumble than it had been before. “My true name is Luctus.”

Stiles knows enough scraps of Latin to recognise that one. _Luctus_ ; grief, mourning. It certainly doesn’t seem surprising that Luctus came after Mr. Tate.

“And Cal, the one who’s angling for Derek’s soul?” he asks. “What’s his ‘true name’?”

Luctus regards Stiles for a moment. He does the light-flashy thing again, as though to demonstrate his disapproval at Stiles not being terrified into submission by his previous display.

He answers the question all the same. “Caligo.”

Mist. Darkness. Fog. Gloom.

Caligo. It sounds like an appropriate name for everything Stiles has felt Derek experience under the demon’s influence.

“Isn’t Caligo a kind of butterfly?” he asks, because demon scariness aside, he’s pretty sure it is.

“Somebody called me?” a higher voice calls from behind Stiles. He swivels around and is faced with a kid, skinny and a little shorter than Stiles himself, also wearing sunglasses. These ones are Ray Bans, though, and they’re complemented by a gelled sweep of hair that makes this dude look like a wannabe from a boy band and/or teen vampire movie.

There’s no way in hell that Stiles is letting _this_ douchebag kill Derek.

“Nope, I don’t remember anybody calling for Justin Bieber,” Stiles retorts.  

Caligo laughs. _Giggles_ is quite possibly the best word for the sound he makes, actually.

“You’ve got swag, Stiles,” he says.

Stiles throws up a little in his mouth. “Jesus Christ,” he murmurs.

“Wow, nasty, no need to bring _him_ into this.”

Stiles is at least twelve hundred percent done with Demon Bieber. He already wanted him dead for what he’s done to Derek, but now the stakes are even higher. The moral obligation is even stronger.

He turns back to Luctus, who at least _pretends_ to look like a mostly-normal human adult.

“Please,” Mr. Tate is begging, “give me someone else. Anyone. Just not her. I can’t hurt her.”

Luctus looks down at Tate, pulls his sunglasses a little way down his nose and meets Tate’s eyes over the top of them. Suddenly Tate’s crashing to the floor and Stiles is on his knees too, the agony suddenly dizzying and blinding, an arctic whirlwind of hurt that swallows the room.

“That’s not the way it works, I’m afraid,” Luctus is saying calmly.

There’s a loud noise, a gunshot, and for a second Stiles thinks his dad’s managed to get his hands on his gun, but when Stiles looks up and takes in the scene he sees otherwise.

Chris Argent stands at the door with a gun in each hand, holsters wrapped around his thighs, and holy shit, Stiles is so glad they have a badass like him on their side right now. Behind him is Allison, her bow in her hands and her quiver on her back; Derek, who’s carrying a duffel bag Stiles assumes is filled with all the mirrors they’d collected; and Lydia who is carrying... oh man. She’s got huge toy water guns in both hands, no doubt loaded with holy water. Stiles will offer the appreciative commentary this scene deserves once it’s all over.

The bad news is that Chris’ bullets don’t seem to do much to the demons, other than catch their attention.

“Called your homies, huh Stiles?” Caligo sneers from behind him, and seriously, Stiles would rather listen to _Peter_ talking than this guy.

“We have backup of our own,” Luctus fills in.

And then there are six of them.

There’s a middle-aged guy wearing business attire, a girl of maybe thirteen with long blonde hair and a sour glare, a brunette twenty-something who looks like she’s dressed to incite a bar fight, and an elderly woman with a grey bun sitting atop her head, wrinkles sunken deep in forehead.

“These are _my_ homies,” says Caligo. “Losers, meet Timor, Miseria, Crucia and Tristitia.”

Luctus seems not to care about Caligo’s Justin Bieber phase, but Stiles is a tiny bit gratified to note the way it pisses off the others.

The newcomers, just like the first two demons, are all wearing sunglasses. What Luctus had done to Mr. Tate had made it fairly obvious that the eyes were important for the demons’ powers, like basilisks or something, so Stiles takes that as a positive sign in relation to the whole mirror theory.

“Who summoned us?” the old lady, Tristitia, croaks irritably. She sniffs the air, and then turns to look right at Stiles. “Yours is the blood that sealed the spell,” she muses. “You are no ordinary human.”

“You’re no ordinary old lady,” Stiles deflects.

“Indeed I am not.”

Nobody seems to be moving, which is more than a little disconcerting. The demons are standing in a ring around Stiles, Tate, Dad and Scott, and the rest of the pack are still over by the doorway. That’s when Stiles sees a flicker of movement behind Derek’s back.

He’s been passing the mirrors out to everyone.

“So while we’re all here,” Stiles says, speaking purely because it’s a thing he can do, and nobody else seems to be doing anything, “why don’t we discuss the terms on which you guys are going to leave this town post haste?”

“You know what we are, sugar,” says Crucia, the brunette. She strides forwards, comes so close that she can run a hand down the side of his face. It’s cold and slippery, and he shudders under the touch of it. “So you must know that we’re not backing down and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Stiles catches Chris’ eye for a fraction of a second, and sees the message there; they’re ready when he is.

“See, I don’t know about that last part,” Stiles says, still uncomfortably close to Crucia’s face. Her breath on his cheeks makes him feel like he’s standing in front of an open freezer. He holds his ground, though.

Twin streams of water spray across the room, one coming from Lydia as she pumps one of her water guns and the other from Chris, who’s exchanged his ineffective lethal weapon for a more effective children’s toy. Stiles cops some of the spray across his face. He wipes it off without much thought as Crucia, Caligo, Timor and Luctus all hiss and swear in pain. Being human may make him vulnerable in plenty of ways compared to demons and werewolves, but it has its perks when it comes to things like holy water and mountain ash.

Stiles can’t keep track of Tristitia or Miseria in this moment, though, and when the fray settles down slightly he sees them; the young girl has an arm around Lydia’s neck, nails digging into his throat in a way that suggests she can do more damage with them than the average human, and the old woman has Tate’s knife pressed against Stiles’ dad’s throat. Chris moves to spray Tristitia with holy water, but she shakes her head silently and presses, a thin line of blood beading on Dad’s skin.

Stiles tries not to panic. He really, really fails, but it isn’t like he has any option but to stand his ground, here.

“What is it you _want_?” he asks the old woman.

“The same thing I want,” Bieber cuts in. “The same think I asked your bud Derek for.” He runs a finger across his throat and makes an awkward clicking noise with his mouth.

“Okay, okay. Just let Lydia and my dad go,” Stiles says, holding his hands up in surrender.

_Derek_ , he thinks as hard as he can in Derek’s direction. _Can you hear me?_

He looks over to see Allison and Scott with matching expressions of horror. Chris looks stoically worried, as he tends to do. Derek looks worried too, but his minute nod reassures Stiles that his messages are getting through.

_Pretend you’re going to do it_ , he tells Derek. _Come over here._

Derek’s eyes widen _. No. I’m not going to hurt you,_ his grunted protests appear in Stiles’ head.

_No, you’re not_ , Stiles agrees. _Just come closer. We could use some werewolf muscle over this side of the room._

“Okay,” Derek says aloud, gritting the words out. It’s partly for show, but Stiles knows he’s also genuinely conflicted, fighting the ever-consuming urge to take the easier, bloodier way out. He imagines taking Derek’s worry away like he’s stripping him of tight bonds. The more Derek moves toward him, the easier they are to unravel. As before, he stows the feelings away in one of his imaginary mind boxes.

“Derek, no,” Dad is saying.

_Dad, it’s okay, I’ll be okay_ , Stiles thinks in his direction. He doesn’t know whether the message gets through, though; much as he hates to leave his dad in suspense, he has to focus his attention on keeping Derek stable right now.

Scott growls. Stiles feels slightly less bad about that one, since Scott’s hatched plenty of plans without filling everybody else in beforehand. Gerard Argent, Derek’s bite and the mountain ash tablets spring to mind. Right now everything is pretty much need to know. Stiles has to get people into the right positions, using whatever pretence is available. Like chess pieces. Just like slightly higher-stakes chess than usual. Sure. He can do this.

Derek’s still not close enough to touch, but Stiles can feel the tension in him lessening with every boxful he locks away, so that’s definitely a good sign.

That’s when Scott, damn it, rushes towards the nearest demon (Luctus, as it happens) and swipes at his face. Luctus’ sunglasses fly off, hitting the floor with a crack, and his skin seems to hiss and partially shift into something dark and smoky, like the shape he’d shown Stiles before. He gets a hand around Scott’s neck and hauls him up, holds him still in a way that makes the alpha werewolf looks terrifyingly weak.

He looks Scott in the eye, and the wave of pain Stiles picks up from his friend is the most unbearable yet. He staggers on the spot, suddenly unsure of which way is up, which surface is the ceiling, which ones are the walls. For half a second he forgets altogether about Derek. When he finally rights himself—albeit hunched over—Derek’s standing right in front of him. Looming over him, even. His hand is raised, sharp-pointed claws pushing out of his nail beds.

“ _Do it_ ,” says Tristitia, knife still pressing against Stiles’ dad’s neck.

“ _Don’t_ ,” says Dad.

“Hey!” Stiles hears Allison interrupt. He catches sight of her striding into the centre of the room to where Scott is fighting a losing battle to get back onto his feet. Allison whips two mirrors out from behind her back. She thrusts one directly in front of Luctus’ face.

Luctus, with his eyes bare, looks right into the glass.

It cracks.

The demon laughs.

With that plan failing spectacularly, Allison swings the second mirror at his face. It comes away smashed and bloody, but the cut it leaves on Luctus’ cheek sews itself up even more speedily than Stiles has seen werewolf wounds heal. Allison’s smart enough not to meet his gaze, but she can’t stop him grabbing her and breathing cold breath down onto her face, even over her closed eyelids. It seems to have the same effect as eye contact, because the next thing Stiles knows, Allison is falling limply to the floor beside Scott in a similar state of agony. He hears her cry out on the way down, and hears Luctus hiss as Chris gives him a spray with the holy water gun.

Stiles tries to unravel the demon’s choking hold on her too, but it’s beyond difficult to focus on trying to pull _three separate people_ together as well as keeping himself conscious under the roiling storm of emotion in the room.

“You can’t kill me with a little looking glass,” Luctus tuts. “I _am_ fear. Nothing you can throw at me could begin to make me afraid.” They’re boastful words, flippant—and Stiles knows it may be crazy, but they give him an idea. Surely a crazy plan is better than no plan at all, which is what they seem to have now that the mirrors have proven to be a bust.

Stiles is pretty well acquainted with the boastful villain type by now—far more so than he ever wanted to be, really—and he knows that even the clever ones let things slip when they think they’re on top. Luctus clearly has no reason to believe that any weapon can defeat him—but Stiles has been a wild card lately. He’s done things that are supposed to be impossible, and he doesn’t even know what limits his powers have, how far they might be able to go. If nobody even knows what Stiles is actually capable of, then Luctus can’t be expecting it either, right?

_A merchant of terror may only be slain by the reflection of its own face._

_I AM fear,_ the demon had said. Stiles thinks there might have been an episode of _Supernatural_ kind of like this—one with a ghost making everyone sick with paranoia. He forces down the urge to laugh at how hilariously pathetic it is that he’s thinking of TV shows at this moment, and instead wonders whether the general principle from that episode might be applied here as well.

What if the awkwardly translated lore doesn’t literally mean their _faces_ , but the effect that their faces have—their eyes, their mouths? If these demons _are_ fear, then could a dose of that fear be the thing that hurts them?

And most importantly, is it possible for Stiles to launch fear at fear itself?

“How about a little bit more entertainment, huh?” Luctus glances down at Scott and Allison on the floor at his feet. “The hunter and the werewolf—ooh, ex-lovers too, by the smell of you. Ah young love—conquering inherent enmity, counteracting the urge to kill. I’ll enjoy finding out which of you gives in first.” He claps his hands together. “First one to slit the other’s throat gets to die happily ever after.”

Scott groans protests into the floor, and Allison’s breathing hard in an attempt to keep herself under control. They’ll go without hurting one another for as long as they can, of course—but Stiles can feel the way they’re hurting under the demon’s spell, the way the pain is playing with the leftover feelings and doubts that hang between them, and he can’t be certain that even Scott’s self-control can last forever.

In front of Stiles, Derek’s still poised to strike—his clawed hand in the air, his face and all the thoughts behind it a battleground.

Whatever Stiles does, he’s going to have to make his move _right now_.


	6. Fear Itself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As soon as season 3a ended, I started writing what was meant to be a 2-4k one shot in which Stiles had psychic powers. I set it aside for a while to work on some other things, and then picked it up again a little over a month ago with the intention of quickly finishing it.  
> 25k later, that little story has finally allowed me to tie it off. 
> 
> Thanks to all of you who stuck it out with me - especially those lovely folk who left me comments along the way. You're the best, and it means the world.

Stiles shuts his eyes, because in this moment what he sees around him is so much less important than what he visualises. He pictures his imaginary lockboxes, and the coffin where he’s buried the pain he’s leeched so far. Each one has a heavy latch which he undoes with trepidation.

He pulls the energy out of them, feels it coming to him as though it’s tunnelling up through the ground, or travelling through the pipes. It stops in front of him, under his hands. His mind’s eye sees it like a restless ball of black light, magically empty and blinding at the same time. He wonders whether the others are seeing something there too, or whether he just looks like a crazy person.

Probably the latter.

He draws energy out of Scott and Allison, feels them vibrate with relief only to stiffen a split second later under another touch from Luctus. The more misery the demon channels into them, the more Stiles’ ball of negative light grows. He gathers it in until it feels like he’s floating, buoyed by magical electricity like something out of a sci-fi movie. It wavers occasionally, like the power is trying to sneak out of his grasp, but he hauls it in with surprising ease.

He reaches out for Derek too, hears just the tiniest exhale of relief from the werewolf and knows Derek’s felt it. A lot of Derek’s pain is old, like the rotting wood and rusting metal of a shipwreck. Caligo’s influence stirs it throughout him, kicking up what dust has managed to settle since the fire. Stiles reels in every strand he can find, every rope that’s been binding Derek inside himself. There’s so much that Stiles doesn’t think he’d be able to see through the clouding mass of it that now surrounds him even if he did open his eyes. His senses all seem muted; he can’t hear anything anymore, can’t taste the metallic blood that had been in his mouth, can’t smell it or anything else. He can’t feel his feet on the floor beneath him, can’t feel air on his skin—only writhing energy. He _can_ sense the presences of the demons more strongly than ever. The knowledge that they’re there is something outside his usual five senses—it’s closest to smell, he thinks, but that still doesn’t quite cover it. It’s like he’s smelling a black hole, a vicious freezing emptiness that tugs at the reality surrounding it.

He sucks in the varying quantities of fear that radiate from Mr. Tate, his Dad, Chris, Lydia. Isaac, who Stiles hadn’t seen before but can now sense is outside.

He takes a deep breath and opens his eyes again.

Honestly, Stiles had expected to see blackness all around him, but what he finds is basically the same scene he’d closed his eyes on earlier. There’s no black energy swirling through the air, no electric flashes, no distance between Stiles’ feet and the floor.

The only change is that now, everyone is looking at him.

“What was that?” Tate asks.

“I was wondering the same,” spits Tristitia, who still has Dad by the neck. “You do realise that no matter how much despair you suck out of your friends, we will always turn around and inflict double? You can’t keep doing this forever—but we are old. We are patient.”

Suddenly Stiles is laughing. He can’t help himself—he’s been underestimated for so long, and it’s always been crappy, but it has also been true that his areas of expertise have lain well outside the general category of ‘fighting’. He’s been the human, uncoordinated, slightly addled brains of the pack rather than the brawn—and he’s still all those things, hasn’t had to give any of them up by becoming a werewolf—but right now he’s about to save the day. At least, he’s about to try his level best.

“What if I have a trick up my sleeve?” he asks. Energy rustles beneath his skin, impatient to be let out. It’s pure suffering, but it doesn’t hurt him. Instead it feels like it wants to hurt Tristitia, wants what Stiles wants. It’s practically comforting; Stiles wonders whether supernatural creatures and superheroes and ninjas and other dangerous people feel like this all the time, like they couldn’t be more right than to trust in their own strength, just edging on invincible.

Stiles raises a hand, points just one finger at Tristitia and twirls it in a circle. He imagines those intangible ropes winding around her neck. There’s still no flash of light, no thunder or smoke, but when the demon gags loudly all the others snap to attention.

Caligo moves towards Derek, but Stiles comprehends his superhuman speed as though he has all the time in the world, shooting out strings to arrest his arms and legs. He tries lifting him in the air just out of interest, and finds that he _can._

“Oh _cool_ ,” he muses aloud, and delights in tossing Demon Bieber back down to the ground headfirst. There’s a crack as his douchey sunglasses break, pieces skittering across the floorboards.

Looking back at Tristitia, he simply says, “Let go of him,” and she steps away from Stiles’ dad altogether. Stiles grins at him, but Dad’s not doing a great job of emoting right now. Stiles is willing to accept that these are extenuating circumstances.

Caligo’s busy getting to his feet when he meets Stiles’ eyes. The glasses aren’t shading them, and Stiles sees nothing but blackness in them. Caligo scowls and Stiles can _see_ the poison hurtling towards him like a brick. He braces himself for a blow, readies his knees in case they buckle and he ends up crashing to the floor.  

But the pain doesn’t come. There’s nothing but power rushing to the surface, leaking out of him almost subconsciously, and then with a flick of the wrist Stiles is deflecting all the hurt, shooting it back to its source.

Caligo reaches a hand out as though to catch it, but he misses.

This time there _is_ a crackling explosion. It starts out with a few sparks, and an expression on the demon’s face that _total_ _shock_ doesn’t adequately describe. Stiles supposes taking a fatal hit would come as a pretty unfathomable surprise to any previously invulnerable creature. Smoke starts to rise from Caligo’s skin, and then there’s a louder roar as bizarre black flames spread over his skin. They seem part fire and part liquid, eating away at the flesh and leaving first dark space, then nothing whatsoever. A pile of clothing is left on the floor where he had been standing.

Stiles looks between Luctus and Tristitia, and asks cheerfully, “so, who’s next?”

“I’m leaving,” Tristitia says quickly, taking a step towards the window as though she means to leap out of it.

“I wouldn’t count on that plan,” Isaac’s voice drifts dryly across from the door. He stands there holding an empty salt sack in one hand.

Before any of the other demons can respond, Stiles sweeps outstretched arms across the room, pinpointing each of them on his radar. He tenses every muscle in his body, reining in the energy so that he can direct it, and then pushes everything he has outwards in five simultaneous blasts. He feels like he’s caught in white water, or gale force winds. His head tips back, his feet rock on the ground, but just before he actually topples over backwards the pressure catches him from the opposite side and pushes him forward instead.

At first it’s kind of like he’s got Iron Man blasters attached to his arms. The demons don’t go down immediately, though; he has to keep fuelling the black fire until it’s engulfed all of them entirely. Soon it starts to feel more like he’s pulling the blood out of his veins and spraying it outwards, or throwing his own bones around as weapons.

As the electrical storm around him runs itself dry, Stiles tilts just a little too far forwards and doesn’t manage to steady himself in time.

The demons are screeching around him—a clawed chalkboard racket that echoes almost soul-deep, like it’s going out on planes that ordinary humans can’t even hear. One of them—Luctus, Stiles thinks—makes a sound of pain that morphs into a cackle as Stiles’ knees hit the floor.

There’s no space for words in the demon’s mouth or in Stiles’, but his mocking is clear enough, and Stiles replies with a particularly strong push in Luctus’ direction.

He’s gratified to see the flames consume the demon’s neck, then his head, each piece of him melting down into a hungry void and swallowing itself up.

Stiles figures out that his nose is bleeding when it dribbles down over his lips. Still, he hangs on as long as he can. The world goes a little bit blurry, but he sees all four of the remaining demons burn away to nothing before his vision blacks out.

 

↔

 

When he comes to he’s being carried. He can see the ground down below him, feel the jolting steps of whoever it is that’s got him slung over his shoulder. He notes the ass not far from his face and recognises it as Derek’s. He’s made enough observations about Derek’s ass to know what it looks like in situations like this.

It’s also a pretty reassuring sign that Derek is still alive. Stiles relaxes a little bit. Although he’s still anxious to check that all the others are okay too, if Derek is, then it’s likely they are.

“Derek,” he tries to say, but he finds that the word grates out of his throat as little more than a hoarse whisper.

Derek hears it anyway, of course, and then Stiles is being pulled down off Derek’s shoulder and lowered to the ground. Derek keeps his hands on Stiles’ ribcage while he attempts to get his footing, which is just as well, because Stiles can’t seem to find a centre of gravity anywhere.

“You’re okay.”

Derek nods curtly. “We were more concerned about you.”

“I seem to be alright,” Stiles assures him. “Nobody else got hurt?”

“Everyone’s fine.”

It occurs to Stiles that he has no idea how Derek is feeling. At first he thinks maybe it’s just by comparison, that all other emotions feel weak compared to the veritable blizzard he’d harnessed to ice the demons. It can’t be that, though, because there isn’t even a hint of outside emotion brushing up against him. He mentally reaches out for Derek, digs in close and _then_ he can feel it—fear, mostly. There is concern too, relief, affection, but all of it is shot through with apprehension.

Stiles reaches out to lay a hand on Derek’s arm, a comforting gesture by intention, but as he does it Derek’s uneasiness takes a sharp hike.

Which means that Stiles is effectively back to square one: Derek Hale is afraid of his powers.

He takes back the hand, tries to step away from Derek altogether, but that only results in him overbalancing and Derek having to come even closer in order to catch him. Stiles wants to be close to Derek, wants to be veryclose indeed, but not when Derek doesn’t want it too. When Derek Hale, scary werewolf extraordinaire, thinks that Stiles is too much of a freak to be around, then being close to him only hurts.

“You know, I can’t automatically feel your emotions anymore,” he says, just to let Derek know. Derek doesn’t reply, so Stiles ploughs on, “Now, where’s my dad?”

 

 

Once Stiles is home, he sleeps for a whole day. He wakes up in the dark to find a note from Dad on his bedside table, letting him know he’s gone to work and will be back in the morning. There’s a sandwich sitting there too, which Stiles eagerly unwraps and bites into. His bruised jaw aches but hunger outweighs the desire to avoid the pain. His taste buds sing under the combined flavours of bacon, lettuce and tomato, and before he knows it the entire thing is gone. There’s a glass of water, which he drains almost without pausing for breath, and a couple of store-bought chocolate cookies, the kind Dad isn’t supposed to buy.

Once he’s eaten, Stiles checks his phone. He has a message from Scott saying that everybody’s okay and not to worry about them, but that Stiles should call him as soon as he wakes up and Scott will come right over if he wants him to. There’s another, earlier one from Scott saying that Deaton wants to talk to him at some point too, to debrief.

There’s nothing from Derek, which doesn’t surprise Stiles at all but stings a little nonetheless. Derek had said he liked Stiles. He’d made him chicken soup when he thought he was dying, and even attempted to choose a long, painful death over the possibility of hurting Stiles, but now that things are at a lull again Stiles doesn’t get a single word from him. It’s so absolutely, typically Derek.

Stiles calls Scott, who’s climbing through his window ten minutes later, bed head and pyjamas and all. Stiles is still pretty tired, so they just lie together on his bed and play a few lazy rounds on the playstation.

“Have you seen Derek around?” Stiles asks at length.

“No,” Scott answers. “Why?”

“Nothing,” says Stiles. “I just thought that maybe after a mutually terrifying emotional experience like that he might have been inclined to be a little more friendly. Or something.”

Scott shrugs, and Stiles can see he just doesn’t get it. “When have we ever known Derek to be friendly?” he says, and Stiles doesn’t try to press for any more.

“So that thing you did, to the demons, that was pretty freaky,” Scott starts, then adds, “in a totally awesome way, obviously.”

“I can’t sense people’s emotions anymore.” Stiles puts it out there right away, because he needs to make sure there’s not even a slim possibility of him having to go through the same thing with Scott that he currently is with Derek. Derek sulking because he doesn’t want his private feelings on display is one thing, but Scott it Stiles’ best ever friend, and they already know each other’s private thoughts and feelings, because they share them with each other anyway. Not to mention it would be grossly unfair for Scott to abandon Stiles for being a freak after Stiles stuck by him when he turned into a werewolf completely out of the blue.

Scott just asks, “why not?”

“I mean, I can if I try really hard, but I have to be doing it on purpose. I guess what I did back at Tate’s house used all that excess energy up. Now I feel mostly normal.”

“Cool,” says Scott, like he’s not bothered by it either way. Stiles reaches over and hugs him tightly.

↔

Stiles thinks for over a week about what to do. He starts going to school again, passes his absence off as a bad bout of the flu, which people seem to believe given the dark bags that linger under his eyes.

Lydia pulls him aside on one occasion to ask what’s going on with him and Derek, and Stiles tells her that nothing is. She just huffs, looks at him with a pitying expression and tells him to fix that.

So he hatches a plan. It’s kind of a lame plan, but the last plan Stiles came up with killed six demons and saved the collective asses of his friends and family, so Stiles gives himself a free pass to follow that success up with something less spectacular. He gets into his jeep after school and heads to the grocery store, googles some recipes while he stands in the aisle and picks up the ingredients for the one that sounds the best. Then he gets back into the car and heads to Derek’s loft before he can overthink it and back out.

He almost runs away after ringing the doorbell, but he stands his ground knowing that it won’t save him any embarrassment anyway because Derek will already know he’s here. He steels himself, and the moment Derek opens the door he launches into his prepared speech.

“This is a symbolic chicken,” Stiles declares, and oh, it didn’t even sound that great in his head, but it’s _magnificently_ woeful now.

Derek raises an eyebrow. One tiny movement, so much sarcasm.

“Because you, Derek Hale, are acting like a ginormous chicken. And because you’re clearly busy stewing here in your own inability to make reasonable adult decisions, I’m going to stop you, and we’re going to stew together instead. Chicken stew. Or like, soup.”

Derek looks at him for what feels like a very long time, no change evident on his face. Then at last he cracks the most miniscule of smiles.

“That pun _almost_ worked,” he says, and Stiles laughs.

“Does this place even have a kitchen?” he asks as Derek lets him through the door.

He half expects the answer to be _no, I live off Chinese takeout and raw bunny rabbits_ , but Derek nods and leads him through several small, empty twists of corridor into a compact, surprisingly clean kitchen area.

Derek gets out knives and chopping boards, places one of each before Stiles, the others in front of himself. Derek takes the chicken and starts cutting into it, looking far more practised than Stiles would if he were attempting the same. He sticks to chopping onions.  

“Did you mean what you said?” he asks, once they’ve both got their tasks underway. “About liking me?”

“Yes.”

“Then what’s the matter? You like someone or you don’t. You don’t get to like them in life-threatening situations only, and then take it all back when life goes back to normal. Or, well, relative normality.”

Derek frowns. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for messing me around, or sorry for liking me?”

“Both, maybe,” Derek sighs. “Look, Stiles, I’m not the best person to—”

“Nuh uh uh, no, nope,” Stiles cuts him off with an energetic flail that almost goes terrible wrong, considering the chef’s knife in his hand. He lays it down on the bench and stares hard at Derek.

“First off, let’s _not_ pretend that this is about you not wanting me to get hurt. I’m already all mixed up in dangerous supernatural shit, and I’m staying that way whether or not you want me to. Secondly, I know what your romantic history is like, okay, so I understand if you have qualms about letting anyone close to you, but seriously, if I wanted to hurt you don’t you think I’d have done it by now? I’m pretty sure that everything that’s happened in the past week has proven that you don’t want to hurt me, and I don’t want to hurt you.”

He gives Derek a few minutes to process that.

“When you killed those demons,” Derek begins again quietly, “I could sort of... feel the power. How powerful you were. Are. You could have tortured us all with a single thought.”

“You could have torn my throat out with your teeth at practically any moment since the first time I met you,” Stiles points out. “Doesn’t mean you ever went and did it. So maybe you didn’t feel like the biggest monster at the party back there. Welcome to my life. But I’ve trusted you for a while now, and I know it’s hard but I think we’ve been on the same team here for long enough that you should trust me back. Besides, I doubt I’ll ever be that strong again without the demons to chuck all that surplus emotional energy around. Pretty sure I’ll just be dealing in normal quantities from now on.”

Derek nods along with the tirade, but he still doesn’t quite seem convinced.

“Is there something else?” Stiles asks.

“I...” Derek starts.

Stiles raises his eyebrows, as if to say _continue, please_.

“I don’t feel sad anymore,” he says. He sounds small, ashamed.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Derek hacks animatedly at the chicken for a few seconds, gathering himself.

“My family,” he says eventually. “I don’t feel... I should feel... but I don’t, not since you took it all away.”

Oh. _Oh_. Stiles isn’t sure how to handle this, exactly. He knows how hard it was to stop carrying the grief of losing his mother around on his back all the time, how it felt like a betrayal to stop feeling it acutely at every moment. Some of that original pain has been replaced by guilt, the guilt of feeling like he’s forgetting her.

“I’m really sorry,” Stiles says, but then abruptly wonders whether he is. It’s been a decade since Derek’s house burned down, and Stiles doesn’t know how much of that pain Derek has left, but he knows he definitely had too much of it before. He was taking too much responsibility for something that was someone else’s fault, Kate Argent’s fault, and it was crippling him. “Actually,” he amends. “I’m only slightly sorry. Your grief helped defeat evil creatures who would otherwise have pushed people to murder and suicide until this town was one big mass grave. It’s your right to grieve for your family, and I know how hard it can be to stop and let go a bit, but you’re _not_ betraying them, Derek. You just used their memory to save a lot of innocent lives. I don’t think they would be upset about that at _all._ ”

It’s obviously not something they’ll be able to clear up instantaneously, but Derek doesn’t kick him out, so they finish making the soup in silence and then eat it in front of the TV. It’s a little bit tense, but it’s a start. A great start, really.

↔

The rain is pummelling against Stiles’ roof so hard he has to turn the TV right up in order to hear it. He’s done all the homework he’s planning on doing tonight, and Dad’s out at work so he’s home alone. Scott’s on a date with Kira, Lydia and Allison are busy having a girly night in, and Stiles has never quite been close enough to Isaac to randomly invite him over without it being kind of weird.

So Stiles texts Derek. _Come to my place if you’re free._

He doesn’t get any response for half an hour so he doesn’t let himself get his hopes up, and instead turns to reading the case files he borrowed from Dad on the case of Mr. Tate, who confessed to the kidnapping of Abigail Francis.

Another fifteen minutes pass uneventfully, and then there’s a knock at the door. Stiles isn’t expecting anyone, but it’s possible his dad sent someone to check on him. He opens the door and finds Derek standing there, sopping wet.

“Wow,” Stiles says, taking in Derek’s hair, matted slickly against his forehead, his green shirt dark with water and clinging to every plane of his torso. “It’s called an umbrella, dude.”

Derek just shrugs, like it doesn’t matter.

“Where the hell did you park, anyway?” Stiles can’t see the Camaro in the driveway or anywhere close by on the street. “You don’t have to be that sneaky about coming by, you know. My dad totally knows you’re really not the murderer I once made you out to be.”

Derek scowls, as he always does at the mention of that particular accusation.

“Cora took it,” he grumbles.

“Cora took what?”

“The Camaro. After I insisted on coming back to Beacon Hills, she took my car and went alone, said I was never actually going to leave this town but she’d be damned if she stuck around any longer, that nothing good has happened to the Hales in Beacon Hills for too many years.”

Stiles highly doubts that disagreement with that statement is the reason Derek decided to stay.  

“So where’d she go?”

“South America. It’s where she was for years after the fire.”

Derek’s dripping pitifully on the doormat, and it finally occurs to Stiles to invite him inside. He runs off to grab a towel from the linen closet, but it’s not really enough to solve the problem of Derek’s completely drenched clothing.

“Come upstairs, you can borrow a shirt. I might have some track pants that’ll fit you—or at worst, some pyjama pants.”

Derek ends up in Stiles’ baggiest track pants and a jumper he got from a relative at Christmas one year and has never worn, partly because it’s way too big for him and partly because it has a reindeer knitted into the front of it. Derek looks suitably unhappy about the design, but he doesn’t actually protest, so Stiles counts it as a win. He tosses Derek’s soaked clothes in the drier.

“So,” he turns to Derek, “how come you’re here?”

“You messaged me,” Derek points out.

“Well, yeah, I did. But you could have said _no, I don’t have a car_ , or _sure but you’ll have to pick me up otherwise I’ll be walking through the driving rain_.”

“It wasn’t a big deal. It’s not like I’ll get a cold. It would have been dangerous for you to drive in the storm, though.”

Stiles cracks up at that. He can’t help it. He runs with werewolves, fights demons and other evil creatures on a regular basis, and Derek worries about him driving in inclement weather.

Derek looks briefly put out at being made fun of, but he seems to realise that he’ll have to accept occasional mocking if he wants to hang out with Stiles. Which, apparently, he does. And doesn’t that make Stiles feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

“Also,” Derek says, “I’m here because this is not a life-threatening situation. And I wanted to clarify that I like you. Outside of life-threatening situations.”

“Oh. Really?”

Derek steps forward, reaches a hand up slowly to touch Stiles’ cheek. Instantly, a warm burst rolls through him, vibrant with trust and fondness and want.

“Really,” Derek says—not that he needs to. Stiles can feel it all as Derek opens himself up to him, voluntarily this time.

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on [tumblr](http://henrymercury.tumblr.com/). Come hang with me.


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